Utility-scale solar outproduced gas plants on 82% of all days from January through May, with batteries helping to extend solar’s reach into the evening hours.

This year has been full of dramatic rivalries. World Cup matchups, Knicks versus Spurs, One Battle After Another versus Sinners at the Oscars, and now California solar power versus natural gas.

For years, natural gas has dominated electricity production in the climate-conscious Golden State, just as it has nationally. In both cases, this fossil fuel delivered about 40% of annual generation for much of the last decade. But that started to change in California as solar developers and rooftop installers added more and more capacity, and big batteries joined the party, too.

Last year, the competition turned into a Knicks-Spurs–style nail-biter: California generated nearly as much from large-scale solar power as from gas. This year, it’s turning into a Super Bowl LX–style rout, with solar surging ahead of gas generation for the first five months of 2026, per federal data.

In fact, solar outperformed gas on 82% of the days in that five-month stretch in the California Independent System Operator’s wholesale market. That’s all the more striking given that the state still has more installed gas capacity (29 gigawatts) than utility-scale solar capacity (25 gigawatts), and that this larger gas fleet can operate whenever, while solar is constrained to sunny times. Nonetheless, the solar fleet overcame those structural limitations to beat gas overall so far this year.

California’s gas fleet is in free fall: Generation dropped by 60% from the same time period in 2024. Solar generation increased by 21% in that interval.

Solar didn’t beat gas on its own, though. Battery developers have built 16 gigawatts of capacity in CAISO to charge up on solar power and then compete with gas after sundown. This buildup has rapidly altered grid dynamics in the evenings, when batteries regularly become the top source of power for multiple hours. Meanwhile, wind imports recently jumped as the gigantic SunZia project came online, and that takes the fight to gas in the middle of the night, further depressing its output.

There’s one big player missing from the government figures. The U.S. Energy Information Agency does not have a direct line on rooftop solar production, since those units don’t report data the way large power plants do; the EIA makes an estimate based on various data streams but doesn’t include those numbers in its solar-versus-gas comparison.

Empirically, we know that California’s rooftop solar capacity nearly matches its utility-scale capacity, so a complete accounting of solar production would presumably look like more of a blowout. Data firm Ember, for instance, tallied small- and large-scale solar production to show that all California solar nearly beat gas for the full year of 2024, but it hasn’t yet released results for the whole of 2025 on its U.S. Electricity Data Explorer.

What we can say for sure, based on just the EIA data, is that utility-scale solar alone is off to a roaring start. Gas may rally this summer, if heat waves push demand from air conditioners beyond what solar production can feasibly meet. But in recent months, the scoreboard hasn’t even been close, so this is solar’s game to win.

When that happens, it will mean that the world’s fourth-largest economy has swapped out its biggest fossil fuel for solar, making the grid both cleaner and more efficient.

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A head-to-head matchup of electric and gasoline cargo trucks shows how rising fuel costs make EVs much cheaper to run. Now, can manufacturers lower up-front costs?

Electric cargo trucks have been getting more cost-competitive for years. But the fuel price spike triggered by the Iran war has made it clear just how much cheaper it can be to move freight with trucks that run on electricity instead of gasoline or diesel.

New data from electric-vehicle manufacturer Workhorse, which runs identical routes with both gasoline cargo trucks and electric cargo trucks for its Stables by Workhorse business, provides a case study of how elevated gasoline prices make EV options more appealing.

Stables delivers packages as an independent service provider for FedEx in Ohio. Its use of internal-combustion-engine and battery-electric trucks side by side has given it a rare ​“controlled, real-world comparison” of the two vehicle classes with ​“the same routes, the same drivers, and the same weather,” as explained in a presentation at the ACT Expo trucking industry show in May.

The electric trucks Workhorse builds and runs in its Stables fleet, a type known as step vans, were already cheaper to operate last year than their gasoline-fueled counterparts — saving about 42.5 cents per mile, based on electricity at 11 cents per kilowatt-hour and gasoline at $2.98 per gallon.

But by May 1, gasoline had spiked to an average of $4.83 per gallon in Ohio, pushing the savings advantage for electric trucks up to 73.6 cents per mile. With gas prices so high, a Workhorse step van driving about 50 miles per day can expect to save about $11,000 per year on fuel costs.

The operating-cost difference matters a lot when it comes to electrifying truck fleets. EV trucks cost 50% to 100% more than fossil-fueled versions, according to industry estimates, which means they need to provide enough savings on operations to make up for that higher sticker price.

In the past few months, Workhorse CEO Scott Griffith said customers have grown more interested in buying trucks from his company, which is a small-scale producer in the broader world of medium-duty truck manufacturing.

“The phone is certainly ringing, and the interest is high, and everyone’s doing the math,” he said. ​“What is the cost of electricity, what are the lease costs, what are the operations and maintenance costs? They’re coming in with a much more sophisticated approach.”

Workhorse’s experience is only one example of how EV trucks are growing more appealing to fleet operators, said Corey Cantor, research director at the Zero Emission Transportation Association trade group. He noted that other fleet operations have observed similarly high savings as gas and diesel prices have spiked in recent months. While those prices have declined slightly since a purported peace deal between the U.S. and Iran last month, they remain significantly higher than before the war began.

Diesel, which is the primary fuel for trucks around the world, has seen an even greater increase in cost than gasoline, putting pressure on fleet operators.

“When diesel is at such an elevated price — even if it may come down over the longer term — it spurs a conversation,” Cantor said.

Making bets on electric futures

While the recent gasoline and diesel price spikes are driving conversations about electrification, it’s not clear whether that’s resulting in more purchases or leases of EV trucks.

That’s mainly because the data hasn’t yet come in, said Jacob Richard, technical project manager at Calstart, a nonprofit group whose members include energy producers, carmakers, and other businesses.

There’s plenty of room for growth. Electric trucks made up less than half a percent of the total U.S. truck stock as of mid-2025, according to Calstart’s January report Zeroing in on Zero-Emission Trucks.

Of the 72,000 electric trucks deployed in the U.S. at the end of last year, the vast majority were so-called ​“last-mile” delivery vans. Cargo vans — the smallest type of commercial cargo vehicle — are an ideal electrification target because they run relatively short routes to and from central depots where they can recharge overnight using slower, less-expensive charging infrastructure, said Mike Roeth, executive director of the North American Council for Freight Efficiency.

The nonprofit research group has put vehicles through real-world tests in its ​“Run on Less” events and found that battery-electric trucks cost less to operate than fossil-fueled equivalents on the sub-100-mile daily routes that make up about half of all freight miles traveled in the U.S.

Griffith agreed that shorter-haul, ​“return-to-base” freight routes have been a good fit for Workhorse customers like Purolator and Gateway Fleets, both of which have placed orders for 100 of the company’s electric step vans this year.

“Many of them are running what we call lollipop routes — 90 miles out from the depot, and coming back and charging up,” Griffith said. He added that ​“a significant chunk of medium-duty trucks” are running such routes, ​“especially the large fleets.”

But electrifying medium-duty trucks is more complicated than electrifying cargo van fleets, Roeth noted. Medium-duty trucks range from step vans like the ubiquitous brown UPS delivery vehicles to box trucks that have different types of rectangular cargo containers mounted on separately built ​“cutaway” chassis. They tend to be built for a wider variety of custom markets in much lower quantities than cargo vans, which more closely resemble mass-market passenger vehicles in how they’re manufactured and marketed.

“The smaller and more automotive you are, the greater the scale of production, the lower the cost,” Roeth said. ​“As you move to a cutaway, where you have to work with a different manufacturer to get that box on, the cost challenges go up.” That’s true for both EV and internal-combustion vehicles in this class, he said.

Still, manufacturers of battery-electric trucks stand a good chance of making headway across market segments while fuel prices are high, Cantor said.

He highlighted Harbinger Motors, a startup that manufactures medium-duty electric-vehicle chassis that can be customized for different classes of vehicles. The California-based startup has raised about $360 million in venture financing, including a $160 million round in November co-led by FedEx, which also ordered 53 of the company’s medium-duty truck chassis.

Workhorse has taken a more circuitous route, Roeth said. He worked at the company back when it was an affiliate of Navistar International making chassis for internal-combustion-engine trucks. In 2013, Workhorse was acquired by startup AMP Electric Vehicles and shifted to making battery-electric chassis.

Last year, it merged with long-time electric-chassis startup Motiv, in what Roeth described as ​“a perfect marriage.” Even so, it’s not easy to break into established medium-duty truck markets: Workhorse reported widening losses in its first earnings report as a combined company in the first quarter of this year, despite increasing revenues.

Those losses were driven in part by higher investments in manufacturing, as Workhorse retools its factory in Union City, Indiana, for the latest generation of its all-electric chassis, featuring more efficient batteries, drivetrains, and power-control systems. That factory is capable of producing up to 5,000 vehicles per year.

“We’re not just sticking an electrified powertrain on what we currently sell,” said Griffith, who was CEO at Motiv before the merger. ​“You can get some efficiencies out of that. But you can’t capture the full benefits of a fully software-defined vehicle without going all the way.”

Getting to up-front price parity

The primary barrier to fleet electrification is the up-front cost of electric trucks. Right now, ​“a standard rule of thumb is that these vehicles are going to cost two times more than the equivalent cost of a diesel or gasoline version,” Calstart’s Richard said.

But there’s a lot of variation. Commercial vehicle pricing data ​“is not as transparent and easy to access as [data on] passenger cars,” Cantor said. Many vehicles are custom-designed, and pricing varies greatly depending on factors such as bulk purchase orders and preexisting relationships with fleet operators.

In the case of Workhorse, Griffith estimated that the company’s electric step vans cost about 30% to 40% more than comparable fossil-fueled vehicles. In early April, Workhorse dropped the price of its standard-sized W56 battery-electric step vans by roughly $60,000 to bring them just under $200,000 apiece, about level with the highest-end gasoline- or diesel-fueled alternatives.

The payback time on an electric truck depends on a mix of things — the model, state incentives, fuel prices, and so on. In states like California and Washington, which have generous incentives, buyers can recoup the extra costs on Workhorse’s larger step-van model in three to five years depending on gas prices, according to the company’s chief communications officer, John Williams.

Whether these kinds of paybacks are fast enough will depend on the fleet operator.

In general, bigger operators can afford to take a risk and wait longer, according to Richard. But Calstart presumes that the majority of buyers need to see a payback in three years, which coincides with how they structure financing and resale planning for their internal-combustion fleet vehicles, he said.

Today, the vast majority of electric trucks are being bought by big corporations that have both the deep pockets and the sustainability goals to make the up-front costs worth absorbing, Griffith said.

“But this is a $23 billion-a-year industry,” he said, citing estimates of annual U.S. sales of medium-duty vehicles — and to meet the needs of the broader market, ​“we’ve got to get the price point down.”

In certain regions, government incentives can nearly close that price gap, Richard said. Though the Trump administration and Republicans in Congress erased many of the federal tax credits that incentivized EV purchases, some EV-friendly states still provide incentives and rebates, he noted. ​“It makes sense for fleets to capture those up-front incentives while they stand.”

But electric truck manufacturers can’t bank on government incentives, Griffith said. ​“Those dollars are disappearing in the coming years. The industry has to get to the point where [total cost of ownership] blows internal combustion out of the water — and the buying price of an EV has to be closer to a 10% premium.”

To be clear, electric trucks offer significant benefits beyond lower fueling costs, Roeth said. Companies participating in his organization’s Run on Less events have tracked financial benefits like significantly lower maintenance costs as well as perks like increased driver comfort. Plus electric trucks release much less carbon and local air pollution — an important improvement, as commercial trucks are responsible for a disproportionate amount of such emissions from the U.S. transportation sector.

“For good or for bad, these trucks are used in routes that are sitting and idling for long periods of time,” Griffith said. ​“They emit three or four times per mile the emissions and carbon you get out of a passenger car. And they’re on routes that tend to affect dense populations,” he said.

Ultimately, he said, ​“if we can improve the economics and emissions together, make everything better on that route, fleets are going to adopt it.”

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New York City’s green building laws are pushing developers toward cleaner technologies — even as state policymakers backtrack on climate change targets.

NEW YORK CITY — Manhattan is teeming with skyscrapers that seem to reach into the clouds. But a gleaming commercial building near the Hudson River is more impressive for how it stretches down into the dirt.

Beneath the floors of 555 Greenwich St. are 68 geothermal energy piles that run nearly 120 feet deep, dodging utility pipes and tunnels that crisscross the busy urban underground. During the sweltering summer, the long vertical piles collect heat from the 16-story building and dump it into the earth, cooling the offices above. In the chillier months, the equipment retrieves that warmth to keep the rooms cozy.

The geothermal system is a key reason why 555 Greenwich can operate without using fossil fuels, making it the city’s first commercial office building to hit that milestone. That’s according to the owner, Hudson Square Properties, which is a joint venture of the real estate company Hines, Trinity Church NYC, and the investment arm of Norway’s sovereign wealth fund.

The building, which finished construction in 2023, should be able to meet half of its heating and cooling needs from geothermal when fully occupied, said Jason Alderman, senior managing director and head of New York at Hines. The other half will be met primarily by the two enormous air-source heat pumps sitting on the rooftop, which overlooks the city’s most iconic towers and the green edges of Central Park.

When I visited the 270,000-square-foot property in early June, Alderman explained that the fossil fuel–free building is a reflection of both New York City’s aggressive climate change policies and the partners’ own ambitions for a highly efficient, carbon-cutting design.

“We wanted to think outside of the box and help set the standard for what others can do,” he said.

We were standing beside the only visible part of the geothermal system: an array of small, dusty pipes peeking out from the partially finished floor of a forthcoming restaurant. In a nearby utility room, I saw control boxes managed by the company Endurant Energy, which monitors temperatures in the underground geothermal piles to determine whether it’s more efficient for the building to grab heat from the earth or run the heat pumps on the roof.

On days when the geothermal setup can produce more energy than needed, it pipes the excess heat directly into its sister property, a nearly century-old Art Deco edifice on 345 Hudson St. The developers recently renovated the older building and combined it with 555 Greenwich to make a single 1.2-million-square-foot office complex in lower Manhattan.

The newer property uses 40% less energy than typical top-quality office buildings and well exceeds New York City’s 2030 climate targets, according to its owners. The older property, which is still transitioning to an all-electric energy system, is on track to reduce its carbon emissions by 90% within the next decade.

As NYC greens its buildings, the state backtracks on climate

Geothermal heating and cooling systems are steadily proliferating beneath the city’s newest buildings, despite the complex engineering challenges and expensive installation costs. Property owners are looking to not just comply with regulations but also to generate long-term energy savings by avoiding natural gas.

Buildings account for more than two-thirds of New York City’s greenhouse gas emissions. Since 2019, city leaders have adopted laws to rein in that planet-warming pollution.

Local Law 154 prohibits the use of fossil fuels in most new construction and will start applying to high-rise buildings in 2027. Local Law 97 requires most buildings over 25,000 square feet, whether new or old, to meet escalating energy-efficiency and emissions standards, with stricter limits set to take effect in 2030.

The city’s deadlines are approaching at a time when New York state is abandoning its most ambitious climate targets. In late May, Gov. Kathy Hochul, a Democrat, signed a budget bill that effectively vaporizes a 2030 mandate to curb statewide emissions by 40% from 1990 levels, replacing the target with a watered-down goal that critics fear will slow the state’s buildout of clean energy technologies.

The rollback at the state level is causing some doubt within the city’s real estate sector about whether the building-decarbonization timelines are really as firm as they seem, experts say.

“When there’s a lack of clarity, it makes it a challenge for building owners to pull the trigger” on efficiency and electrification projects, said Laura Bendayan, director of strategic partnerships at Entech. The NYC-based firm helps buildings optimize their existing boiler systems to reduce energy bills and lower emissions.

“We always recommend that [owners] be ahead of the game,” she added. ​“But there’s this sense of uncertainty that you can’t take away.”

Hudson Square Properties, for its part, says it’s pushing ahead with its no-fossil-fuels approach in both of its buildings.

During my visit, Alderman led me to the top of the newer building, showing me the controls for the radiant heating and cooling system, which circulates chilled or warm water through tubing beneath every floor. This technology provides a ​“baseline comfort level” and supplements the larger geothermal system, he said. Vents above our heads draw fresh outdoor air into the building, a step that helps lower the structure’s overall energy use by taking strain off the HVAC equipment.

From there, we walked through a heavy set of doors leading into the old building. The highest of 345 Hudson’s 17 floors is a cavernous empty room that originally housed massive printing presses, whose humming sounds and ink smells filled the neighborhood until the 1980s.

The developers are working floor by floor to phase out the existing gas-fueled heaters and boilers and replace them with a kind of thermal energy network. A labyrinth of pipes circulates water throughout the building; heat pumps can then tap into or reject heat from this system to keep occupants comfortable.

“You’re trying to reuse all of the energy that you’ve brought into the building, in the different places where it’s needed,” Alderman said. It’s the complete opposite of New York City’s district steam system, which gets rid of excess heat by piping clouds of vapor out onto the streets.

The 345 Hudson retrofit won a $5 million grant from the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority, as part of the Empire Building Challenge, which advances low-carbon retrofits in the state’s tallest buildings. The developers also raised more than $30 million in private funding for the project.

New York state’s retrenchment from ambitious climate policies might wind up undermining some of those efforts. As buildings shift toward using all-electric technologies, the level of emissions reductions they achieve will largely depend on how clean the electric grid is, said Kelly Dougherty, president of FirstService Energy, a New York–based firm that helps manage energy systems for residential buildings.

“If it’s rolled back any further, then we may have some issues,” Dougherty said about New York state’s landmark climate law. Still, ​“a lot of work has been done on reducing greenhouse gas emissions in the city,” she added. ​“I don’t think it’s going to go away.”

At the end of our tour, standing on an enviable rooftop patio, Alderman said he’ll be watching to see how the two buildings perform as they fill up with tenants and operate over time. As of now, his firm estimates that 555 Greenwich alone should save around $3 million over 15 years in avoided energy bills.

“I hope we can prove to ourselves and to others some of the long-term operating-cost savings — and that people will look to these as examples of what can be accomplished,” he said.

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