See more from Canary Media’s ​“Chart of the Week” column.

Two decades ago, the European Union got basically none of its power from wind and solar. Now, those are the leading sources of electricity in the bloc.

In 2025, wind and solar produced more electrons for the EU than fossil fuels did, per a new Ember report — the first time that’s ever happened over the course of an entire year.

It’s a watershed moment. Back in 2015, just under 13% of the EU’s electricity was generated from whirling wind turbine blades and sun-soaking photovoltaic panels. Fossil fuels, meanwhile, produced almost 43% of its power; coal alone accounted for nearly one-quarter of electricity.

Flash forward to 2025: The share of electricity from fossil fuels dropped below 29% while that from wind and solar jumped above 30%.

Though wind still produces more power for the EU than solar does, it was the blistering growth of the latter that drove last year’s achievement. In fact, wind generation actually declined slightly in 2025 from the year prior, but that was offset by a 20% increase in electricity from solar. All 27 EU nations saw solar generation grow last year — and globally, seven EU nations are among the countries that depend most on solar for electricity.

At the same time, coal has entered structural decline, the result of ever-cheaper renewables, an increasing reliance on natural gas, and a suite of policies discouraging coal use. Last year, coal accounted for just 9.2% of the region’s electricity, and several EU nations have already phased it out entirely or committed to doing so before 2030.

That leaves gas, a fuel that provided 16.7% of the EU’s power last year but which the region produces little of.

Europe had heavily depended on gas from Russia until 2022, when the nation invaded Ukraine and prompted a reckoning around domestic energy security in the EU. The bloc is now aiming to quit Russian gas completely by next year. It has turned to two sources to make up for that lost energy: domestic renewables and imported liquefied natural gas from the U.S.

But now, with the Trump administration destabilizing the EU-U.S. relationship, the bloc would like to reduce reliance on the U.S., too. The upshot: Expect renewable energy to keep winning in Europe.

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Back in 2021, Winter Storm Uri resulted in more than 240 deaths in Texas as freezing temperatures shut down gas power plants and pushed the state’s independent electricity grid to the brink of collapse.

It was an example of a worst-case wintertime scenario for the power sector — and of how fossil fuel resources, often touted for their reliability, can falter when they’re needed most.

So when the massive Winter Storm Fern was bearing down on more than half of the U.S. last week, including Texas and much of the Southeast, onlookers braced for a repeat. And while the grid was indeed pushed to its limit, it weathered the storm.

In Texas, efforts to winterize power plants following Uri paid off, and the state avoided forced shutoffs this time around. Texas also has added a tremendous amount of wind, solar, and battery storage over the past few years, helping its grid keep pace amid the blistering cold. It’s true that Fern wasn’t as intense of a storm as Uri, but University of Texas energy professor Michael Webber told KXAN that the current grid likely would’ve avoided much of 2021’s devastation.

In New England, which was hammered with snow and intense cold, the power grid was stable but dirtier than usual: It had to rely heavily on oil, a reserve fuel that is especially polluting.

One big reason? Canadian hydropower, usually a key source, was hard to come by as that nation dealt with its own cold spell, and gas was in short supply, too, as New England homes burned more of it for heating. For what it’s worth, Vineyard Wind — the nearly complete offshore wind farm that just this week defeated a Trump administration stop-work order — provided a notable boost to the grid even in its partially finished state.

But it wasn’t all good news. More than one million people lost power during the storm, particularly in the Southeast, and thousands are still in the dark as of this morning. Power plant shutoffs aren’t to blame, but rather challenges with the grid itself are, including toppled utility poles, iced-over substations, and downed transmission lines.

PJM Interconnection — the nation’s largest grid operator, which spans the mid-Atlantic — suffered the most intense impact. Data analyzed by think tank Energy Innovation suggests that frozen pipelines and other infrastructure curbed fossil-fueled power plants’ output by tens of gigawatts in the region.

This reduced power generation luckily didn’t force PJM to institute rolling blackouts. But it did, as Energy Innovation put it, underscore a clear point: It’s not viable to rely on fossil fuels alone to get through intense winter weather — and the Trump administration’s efforts to block solar and wind while propping up fossil fuels could prove dangerous if taken to their extreme.

More big energy stories

Outside the U.S., offshore wind sails ahead

As the Trump administration turns its back on offshore wind, the rest of the world is going full speed ahead. Ten European countries formed a coalition this week to build out 100 GW of offshore wind power, Alexander C. Kaufman reports. It’s all part of an effort to turn the North Sea into​“the world’s largest clean energy reservoir,” German Chancellor Friedrich Merz said.

The announcement follows China’s insistence last week that it will continue to build its offshore wind dominance, even after a dig from Trump.

Back in the U.S., there’s at least a smidgen of good news on offshore wind. On Tuesday, a federal judge ruled that Vineyard Wind can resume construction. It’s one of five offshore wind farms that the Trump administration ordered to stop work in December; judges allowed three other projects to continue building last week. Developer GE Vernova says it could face a $250 million loss this year due to Vineyard Wind’s installation delays.

Tribes press on with clean energy construction

Tribes from coast to coast have long suffered inequities in energy access and affordability. Funding issued under the Biden administration was meant to change that by financing solar farm construction, microgrid development, and other projects to help tribes take advantage of their enormous wind and solar energy potential.

That all got a lot harder when the Trump administration canceled billions of dollars in clean energy funding, Canary Media’s Jeff St. John reports. But tribes are still finding ways to push their projects forward, including with help from the Alliance for Tribal Clean Energy, which brings together tribes, charitable foundations, and clean energy financiers.

“The scale of this disruption is undeniable,” Chéri Smith, president and CEO of the alliance, told Jeff. ​“But we have to do something. We can’t just sit there.”

Clean energy news to know this week

Chargers keep cruising: The U.S. built more than 18,000 new public EV-charging stations last year despite the Trump administration’s freeze on EV-charging grants and other efforts to derail the EV transition. (Canary Media)

Tesla’s solar pivot: Tesla announces plans to build its own solar panel at its Buffalo, New York, factory, marking a recommitment to home energy as it moves away from EVs. (Canary Media)

Funding climate resilience: Maine lawmakers advance a ​“climate superfund” bill that would require fossil fuel companies to pay for damages caused by climate change, and Illinois and Connecticut move toward introducing similar measures. (Maine Morning Star, Hartford Courant, Inside Climate News)

Solar coexistence: A new study debunks the myth that solar panels are destroying huge swaths of North Carolina farmland, finding that arrays take up just 0.28% of land that’s classified as agricultural. (Canary Media)

Data centers’ concrete impacts: Building a data center with traditional concrete can result in tons of additional carbon emissions — a fact that’s driving tech companies to start buying low-emissions versions of the material. (Bloomberg)

Nuclear changes: Internal documents show the DOE is quietly overhauling nuclear safety regulations and sharing the changes with affected companies in an attempt to speed development of next-generation reactors. (NPR)

Preserving plants: The Gemini Solar Project outside Las Vegas shows that careful planning can preserve delicate plants and other species when solar farms are built, and even help them thrive. (Grist)

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First it got cold. Across New England, temperatures have been almost constantly below 20 degrees Fahrenheit since last Friday night.

Then it snowed. Winter Storm Fern swept through the region on Sunday and Monday, leaving more than two feet of white stuff in its wake in many places.

But despite the extreme weather, the lights stayed on in the Northeast, for the most part.

At a moment when there is copious debate over how, and how much, to strengthen and expand the New England electric grid, this past weekend functioned as a sort of stress test for the system, highlighting both its strengths and its shortcomings. A closer look at how the grid managed to keep us watching football games and charging our phones offers a few key lessons.

Canada isn’t going to save us

The climate challenges posed by Winter Storm Fern cropped up just a week after the long-awaited New England Clean Energy Connect transmission line started sending hydropower from Quebec into the Northeast U.S. Its purpose: to supply more than 1 gigawatt of power to customers in Massachusetts, providing clean energy and cost savings to the state, which has struck a long-term procurement deal with Canadian energy giant Hydro-Québec.

Last Friday and early Saturday, power flowed as expected. But from Saturday afternoon until Monday afternoon, the exports stopped for all but a few hours on Sunday. Quebec, also experiencing bitter cold, needed the power for its own heating systems. In fact, demand in the province was so high that New England began sending it electricity via a transmission line usually used to bring Canadian power into the U.S.

“There was an expectation that there was a higher quantity and more consistent flows than what happened in practice,” said Dan Dolan, president of the trade group New England Power Generators Association. ​“The timing of this is certainly drawing a lot of attention, just a week into the commissioning of the project.”

Hydro-Québec didn’t do anything illegal or unethical, Dolan said, and its CEO has indicated the company is prepared to pay the penalties outlined in its contract with Massachusetts for not sending power as obligated. Still, this weekend makes clear that the much-vaunted new transmission line might not do as much to alleviate the region’s energy concerns as had been hoped.

New England needs more generation

As Canadian hydropower stopped coming, New England also had to cope with constrained natural gas supplies. People throughout the region needed the fossil fuel to warm their houses, limiting the supply that was available to power plants and spiking prices. As a result, usually expensive oil generation became the more economical option. Rarely used oil-burning power plants were called into action, producing more than a third of the power flowing onto the grid for some periods. For a sense of scale: Oil-fired generation provided roughly 1% of the region’s power in 2025.

The sudden dependence on one of the dirtiest forms of power supply makes it clear that the region needs to generate more electricity from a wider range of resources, grid experts say. The grid will be more reliable and more economical if it doesn’t have to put so many of its eggs in an expensive, high-emissions basket like oil.

“The cold temperatures and the storm really, really highlight the importance of a portfolio approach,” said Valessa Souter-Kline, managing director of the industry association Advanced Energy United.

But curbing demand matters, too

Planning for a future of more abundant power supply is all well and good, but the cost and high emissions of burning oil for electricity highlight the need to do more with the grid we have now, said Phelps Turner, director of clean grid for environmental advocacy group the Conservation Law Foundation.

The region needs to expand demand-response programs, he said. These initiatives compensate consumers for scaling back their energy use at times of particularly high demand, freeing up electrons for other customers. Commercial operations might power down some machines or use an on-site generator for a time, while residential customers might hold off on running their dishwashers for a couple of hours or charge their EVs overnight rather than in the early evening.

“We have to be more proactive about managing demand for electricity,” Phelps said. ​“Those programs aren’t going to solve all of our problems, but they are a tool that needs to be used in situations like this.”

Wind has a lot of potential – if it can get built

Much of the conversation about the weekend’s grid performance has focused on the lack of power along the new transmission line and the spike in oil-fired generation. However, wind also made solid contributions to the stability of the system. Overnight Friday, into Saturday, more than 1.5 gigawatts of wind power — roughly 10% of New England’s total load — was flowing onto the grid.

Data from grid operator ISO New England does not break out the contributions of onshore and offshore wind. Energy insiders, however, are confident that Vineyard Wind — the nearly completed development off the coast of Massachusetts that’s already sending some power to the grid — played a significant role in wind’s strong performance.

The numbers suggest that offshore wind could live up to its promise of providing a robust power supply, particularly in the winter. That could go a long way in addressing the region’s energy affordability woes: An analysis released in 2025 concludes that Massachusetts utility customers would’ve saved as much as $212 million during the winter of 2024–25 if the region had had 3.5 GW of offshore wind capacity online.

Of course, this potential only matters if offshore wind developments can actually get built. Federal judges have allowed work to resume on four of the five under-construction projects stopped last month by the Trump administration, but federal policies and challenging economic conditions have stalled or scuttled at least three others in development.

This past weekend, however, made a strong case for the value that offshore wind can bring, experts said.

“Here in New England, low temperatures and strong winds tend to travel together,” Turner said. ​“Offshore wind can be an incredibly important and valuable resource during cold snaps like this one.”