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When solar developers look to build big projects on farmland, the same arguments tend to come up: The array will waste useful agricultural tracts, ruin views, and sully the pastoral character of the rural community, public commenters say.
In Ohio, a state where these debates have long played out, comments like that have even led the state’s power siting board to block projects. These sentiments, in Ohio and beyond, are sometimes motivated by misinformation from anti-solar groups, including organizations with fossil fuel industry ties.
But as one solar developer recently found, hundreds of negative comments don’t necessarily mean hundreds of people oppose a project, Kathiann Kowalski reported this week for Canary Media.
The Ohio Power Siting Board received more than 2,500 comments about the Grange Solar Grazing Center, which aims to bring solar and sheep together on a 2,570-acre plot in the state’s Logan County. When the project’s developer took a closer look at the feedback, it found 16 individuals had collectively submitted more than 140 of those comments, most of them opposing the project. When accounting for repeats, the company found that 80% of individual commenters actually back the solar array.
Supportive commenters said they expect the Grange project to bring jobs and public funding to the county. A 2023 report from the Purdue Center for Regional Development verified that solar projects typically create short-term construction jobs, bring in tax revenue, and help raise farmers’ land values.
Taking a step back, it’s worth noting that more than three-quarters of Americans support expanding solar, per a May 2024 survey from Pew Research Center. That includes 64% of Republicans — though the group has soured on the energy source in recent years.
Mass layoffs hit the Energy Department
The Trump administration closed last week with a big — but not totally unexpected — blow to the U.S. Energy Department workforce. As many as 2,000 probationary DOE employees were laid off, ending what one staffer described to Latitude Media as a “weird, quiet limbo” following President Donald Trump’s inauguration.
But the layoff didn’t last long for a group of employees at the Bonneville Power Administration. About 30 workers who maintain power lines and other infrastructure at the Pacific Northwest grid operator were asked back just days later, a union leader told Politico.
Clean energy smashed a record last year
The U.S. added a whopping 48.2 GW of new utility-scale solar, wind, and battery storage capacity in 2024, an increase of 47% from the year before, according to new research by energy data firm Cleanview. Texas led the way on solar and wind and was the runner-up on battery installations after California. Still, fossil fuels remain responsible for more than half of the country’s electricity generation — and the Trump presidency is likely to slow clean energy development this year. Akielly Hu breaks down the whole report for Canary Media here.
Green bank clawback: The new head of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency wants to claw back $20 billion in federal green bank funding that was meant to help low-income communities build solar arrays, deploy electric school buses, and otherwise implement clean energy. (Canary Media)
Electric truck breakdown: Electric and fuel-cell truck startup Nikola, once valued more than Ford at $30 billion, files for bankruptcy protection after failing to raise money or find a buyer. (CNBC)
Rural clean energy freeze: Farmers across the country are taking a hit from the federal funding freeze as money stops flowing to a program supporting clean energy installations and energy-efficiency upgrades for agricultural and rural businesses. (Associated Press)
Sustainable jet fuel resumes takeoff: The Trump administration finalized a $1.44 billion loan for a sustainable aviation fuel refinery in Montana, a first since it paused all deals made by the Energy Department’s Loan Programs Office under Biden. (Canary Media)
Derailing environmental justice: Advocates call out the Trump administration for shutting down the federal government’s environmental justice departments, saying the decision will“create challenges and impacts that will last well beyond the current administration.” (Inside Climate News)
Cutting carbon in construction: As the federal government drops its commitment to buying lower-carbon building materials, several states are forming coalitions and ramping up their efforts. (Canary Media)
Offshore wind blowback: President Trump’s executive order halting offshore wind permitting could make it difficult or impossible for several Northeastern states to reach their ambitious climate goals. (Washington Post)
Dive deeper: A conservative group that once opposed Dominion Energy’s major Virginia offshore wind farm is now encouraging the project to go ahead, saying that halting it could put ratepayers on the hook for $6 billion already spent. (Canary Media)
Can tariffs clean up steel? A U.S. steel industry advocate cheers Trump’s 25% tariff on imports, saying those imposed during the last Trump administration spurred $20 billion in investment to modernize, decarbonize, and electrify the industry. (E&E News)
The city of Minneapolis is retooling a decade-old partnership with its gas and electric utilities in response to criticism that it hasn’t done enough to help the city reach its climate goals.
The Clean Energy Partnership was established in 2014 as part of the city’s last round of utility franchise agreements with Xcel Energy and CenterPoint Energy. The agreements authorize utilities’ use of public right-of-way, often in exchange for fees or meeting other terms or conditions from the city.
A little over a decade ago, Minneapolis was among the first U.S. cities to view utility franchise agreements as a potential tool to leverage for climate action. Some advocates at the time had been pressuring the city to study creating a municipal utility to accelerate clean energy, and the partnership emerged as a compromise to give the city more say in the utilities’ operations.
Former City Council member Cam Gordon, who represented southeast Minneapolis in 2014 when the council approved the partnership, is one of the critics who say the initiative “never realized its potential.” Instead, it mainly served as “a government relations and promotional PR tool to allow [elected officials] and the utilities to feel like we’re doing something,” he said.
The City Council is set to approve new franchise agreements this week, and they include an updated memorandum of understanding for the Clean Energy Partnership that will require regular reporting on key performance indicators, new utility-specific emission goals, energy conservation, and service reliability in disadvantaged neighborhoods.
Spokespeople for both companies said they welcome the planned changes and that the agreement reflects their interest in working with city leaders on shared clean energy goals.
Since the partnership went into effect in 2015, it has brought together representatives of the utilities, the City Council, and the mayor’s office once per quarter to talk about efforts to reduce emissions in the city. Clean energy advocates and other stakeholders sit on an advisory committee but do not have a formal seat on the partnership’s governing board.
Minneapolis City Council Vice President Aisha Chughtai, who represents the council on the partnership board, expressed frustration about the lack of follow-through from utilities. “Sitting in a meeting and nodding along is one thing. Changing your actions is another,” she said.
By the partnership’s own measures, it has failed to make significant progress on five out of the city’s seven major climate goals. The city is on track with its target to eliminate greenhouse gas emissions from municipal operations but behind pace with its goals related to citywide, residential, commercial, or industrial emissions.
Going forward, the partnership board will continue to meet quarterly, but instead of revolving around city climate goals, each utility will be expected to hit specific targets within Minneapolis’s borders. CenterPoint will commit to reducing emissions from natural gas use by at least 20% by 2035 compared with 2021.
“I think it’s progress,” said council member Katie Cashman, who represents an area west of downtown. The gas utility’s target is “a very meager, insufficient goal, but it is a goal nonetheless, and they haven’t done this in any other city.”
CenterPoint agreed to send a more senior executive to attend the quarterly partnership meetings, though Xcel did not. The utilities also rejected the city’s proposal to hire an outside administrator to manage the partnership.
City leaders believe the new agreement does a better job of setting expectations, but Minneapolis will still lack formal leverage over the utilities if they fail to make progress. The agreement does not contain any penalties for failure to follow through, and the next window to renegotiate isn’t until 2035 when the franchise agreement comes back up for renewal.
Luke Hollenkamp, the city’s sustainability program coordinator, said data reported through the partnership allows the city to make course corrections in its climate work.
“We can see what’s working, what’s not working, and also see where we need to invest more time,” he said.
Xcel Energy’s spokesperson said the partnership has led to successes, noting that citywide emissions from electricity have declined and that Minneapolis met its goal of powering city operations with 100% renewable electricity in 2023 by participating in Xcel’s Renewable*Connect program.
CenterPoint said it has invested nearly $61 million in energy efficiency programs in Minneapolis since 2017, saving residents $25 million in energy costs while reducing 245,000 metric tons of emissions. The utility also developed an on-bill financing program advocated by clean energy activists and others.
Despite the partnership’s imperfections, current and former city officials said it’s better to keep it in place as part of the new franchise agreements than to let it dissolve.
“We’re ramping up our trajectory [to cut emissions],” Cashman said. “We’re setting an example of how other cities can lead on climate action.”
The City Council’s climate and infrastructure committee approved the new agreements on Feb. 6; the full council is set to vote on them Feb. 13.
Clean energy installations in the U.S. reached a record high last year, with the country adding 47% more capacity than in 2023, according to new research by energy data firm Cleanview.
Boosted by tax credits under the Inflation Reduction Act and the plummeting costs of renewable technologies, developers added 48.2 gigawatts of utility-scale solar, wind, and battery storage capacity in 2024. In total, carbon-free sources including nuclear accounted for 95% of new power capacity built in the U.S. last year; solar and batteries alone made up 83%.
The report finds that developers are not only building more projects but bigger ones, too. In 2024, companies built 135 solar, wind, and storage facilities with 100 megawatts or more of capacity, continuing a trend of clean energy megaprojects around the country.
Despite the growth of renewables, fossil fuels — mostly gas — still generated more than half of the U.S.’s electricity last year. Carbon-free sources including nuclear produced just over 40% of power.
This year, renewables will continue growing but at a slower pace, the report says. Based on developer projections, the U.S. could add 60 GW of large-scale clean power capacity in 2025. That would be a 26% jump from the previous year, but it’s only possible if the industry can maintain momentum despite headwinds from the Trump administration.
Solar led the way last year and is expected to do the same this year.
In 2024, the U.S. added a new record of 32.1 GW worth of utility-scale solar capacity. That’s a 65% increase from 2023, when the country added 19.5 GW of utility-scale solar. Most new solar was built in Texas, which added 8.9 GW worth of the clean energy source, followed by Florida, which built 3 GW and outpaced California for the first time. Arkansas, Missouri, and Louisiana each saw rapid growth in solar, adding hundreds of MW of capacity where relatively little existed before.
Developers expect to add 33 GW of utility-scale solar to the grid in 2025, which would represent a 3% year-on-year growth, the report finds. The U.S. Energy Information Administration, meanwhile, said in late January that it expects solar installations to decline to 26 GW this year.
Continued progress for solar — and for any clean energy deployments — will depend heavily on the Trump administration.
President Donald Trump has already stalled clean energy and infrastructure projects nationwide by attempting to halt hundreds of billions of dollars in congressionally authorized funding — a move that experts say is illegal and has been struck down by federal courts. Some Republican members of Congress have also threatened to roll back clean energy tax credits under the Inflation Reduction Act that are key to enduring growth in the renewables sector.
For utility-scale solar, “uncertainty around the Trump administration’s energy agenda and the future of the IRA will cause the segment to stagnate, despite extremely high demand from data centers,” analysts at Wood Mackenzie wrote in January.
The political picture is even more grim for the U.S. wind sector, which has already seen years of declining installations and now faces relentless attacks from Trump.
For several years now, the wind industry has faced challenges including a lack of long-distance transmission lines to transport electricity from far-flung areas in the middle of the country to urban centers. Supply chain woes and inflation have also led to a spate of canceled offshore wind projects in the Northeast.
In 2024, the U.S. added 5.1 GW of utility-scale wind, including its first commercial offshore wind farm, marking a 23% drop from 2023 and the fourth year in a row of falling annual installations. Texas alone accounted for 42% of the country’s new wind capacity in 2024, bringing 2.1 GW online.
Developers expect to add 9.2 GW of wind capacity this year, and 6.1 GW are already under construction or waiting to come online, according to the Cleanview report. If that happens, wind capacity additions would increase by 79% this year.
But that’s a big if. Trump has vowed that “no new windmills” will be built during his presidency and has taken aim at offshore wind in particular — a sector that on paper is set to give wind installations a big boost this year. It remains to be seen whether these under-construction projects will be able to forge ahead as planned despite political headwinds.
Battery storage could be more of a bright spot. Its growth, already fast, is set to accelerate this year.
Last year, the U.S. added 10.9 GW of battery storage capacity, a 65% year-on-year increase that surpassed the previous 56% leap in 2023. California and Texas brought the most grid storage online, building 3,152 MW and 2,832 MW of capacity respectively.
In 2025, storage developers expect to add 18.1 GW of capacity, which would equal a 68% jump from 2024. Based on projections, Texas will overtake California as the nation’s leading energy storage market by adding 7 GW of capacity this year, Cleanview found.
The battery buildout has been propelled in part by declining prices, but even energy storage hasn’t escaped Trump’s assault on renewables. The administration’s tariffs on Chinese imports are expected to negatively impact the industry, which relies on batteries manufactured in China.
The Department of Energy made an unprecedented number of loans to ambitious clean energy projects throughout the Biden administration. Now the fate of that financing is uncertain amid President Trump’s ongoing attacks on federal climate and clean energy spending.
Under Biden, the DOE’s Loan Programs Office issued a total of 53 loans and loan guarantees worth over $107 billion. They went to large-scale projects including electric-vehicle factories from Ford and Rivian, the restart of the Palisades nuclear power plant in Michigan, and facilities that produce sustainable aviation fuel. The map below, based on public DOE data compiled on January 17 and shared with Canary Media, shows LPO loans by status for projects where geographic data is available. See the data table at the end of this article for more information on all projects that received LPO loans.
It’s unclear how the Trump administration will treat these loans.
LPO’s new director, John Sneed, is exploring whether it’s legally viable to cancel existing loans made by the office, per reporting from Bloomberg.
About 44% of the LPO financing announced under Biden — nearly $47 billion — is currently in the conditional phase, meaning it’s unfinalized and still subject to negotiations with the federal government. A big question mark hangs over these conditional loan commitments, though even finalized loans could be targeted for clawbacks, experts say.
The LPO, which awarded key financing to Elon Musk’s Tesla in 2010, saw its lending authority soar to nearly $400 billion thanks to the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act. As of January 17, the office reported that over 160 applicants were currently seeking more than $200 billion in loans for various energy projects.
Sneed intends to focus the office’s remaining loan authority on technologies like nuclear power and liquefied natural gas, Bloomberg reported, technologies favored by Trump’s newly confirmed Energy Secretary Chris Wright. Wright is the founder and former CEO of fracking firm Liberty Energy and sat on the board of small modular nuclear startup Oklo. Liberty also invested $10 million in next-gen geothermal startup Fervo Energy under Wright’s tenure.
The LPO’s stated mission is to provide low-cost financing to clean energy and transportation projects that struggle to attract investment from traditional lenders who are wary of unique or first-of-a-kind investments. In seeking to make good on that promise, the LPO has actually earned — not lost — money over its 20-year history.
See the table below for the full list of Biden-era LPO loans.
The U.S. solar energy industry has succeeded in doing something that would have been hard to imagine a few years ago: It has officially built more than enough factories to meet the country’s demand for solar panels.
The nation can now produce nearly 52 gigawatts of solar panels each year, per a new tally from the Solar Energy Industries Association. That’s up from the 40 GW of capacity reported in late 2024. These numbers don’t count actual production, which is subject to factors like staffing and market demand, but rather what the industry is capable of. Current capacity exceeds the module component of SEIA’s goal from 2020, which was for the whole solar supply chain to hit 50 GW by 2030.
The factory buildout employs workers across the U.S. in high-tech manufacturing roles and diminishes reliance on China, the long-time leader in solar manufacturing. But solar panels, which industry insiders refer to as modules, are just the last step of the solar supply chain: Currently, U.S. factories assemble modules from solar cells that are almost exclusively produced overseas. Those cells, which convert sunlight into electricity, incorporate wafers that are meticulously sliced from silicon ingots; factories that make ingots, wafers, or cells are more complex and capital-intensive than module assembly plants.
Those precursor steps have lagged behind the U.S. module buildout, but companies have pledged to build factories for 56 GW of solar-cell capacity in the next few years, SEIA said. Those proposed projects, if they get built, would meet the needs of the newly revitalized U.S. solar-panel industry. But erecting solar-cell factories requires a step change in capital investment compared with module assembly.
In November, legacy solar manufacturer Suniva kicked off the first new domestic cell production since U.S. producers (Suniva included) succumbed to competition from China in the 2010s. ES Foundry launched pilot cell production at its South Carolina plant in January. The company plans to employ around 500 workers by this summer and ramp up to 3 GW of annual production capacity by the end of September.
Five more cell factories are under construction, per SEIA. They include QCells’ complex in north Georgia, which should bring 3.3 GW of cell production online later this year, and Silfab Solar’s 1 GW plant in South Carolina.
But President Donald Trump swiftly attacked his predecessor’s investments in clean energy, signing an order on his first day in office to “immediately pause the disbursement of funds” from the Biden administration’s landmark climate and infrastructure laws. That order targets grants, loans, and other appropriated funds and therefore does not seem to affect tax credits, Canary Media previously reported. But the move has sown confusion in clean-energy markets and could presage attempts to undo the legislation that created the tax credits.
Some companies are thus holding back on solar-cell factory investments until they see what the Trump administration does with a key manufacturing tax credit, which has proven vital to secure construction loans.
The rebirth of U.S. solar manufacturing had to start somewhere, and assembling panels made sense as that first step. Now, all those panel makers could become anchor customers for the next link in the chain — the proposed cell manufacturers. But making that jump isn’t so easy.
Take the case of Heliene, a company based in Ontario, Canada, that nonetheless has established its bona fides as a committed U.S. solar manufacturer.
Heliene opened a solar-module factory in Mountain Iron, Minnesota, back in 2017, during the first Trump administration. The company later expanded that facility to assemble 800 megawatts of panels per year with a staff of 320 workers. Another expansion is already underway to grow that workforce to 520 and capacity to 1.3 GW by April.
In November, when previously bankrupt Suniva began the first U.S. cell production in years, Heliene swooped in to purchase every cell Suniva’s new factory could make. Heliene could, for the time being, tout its products as the only U.S.-built modules filled with U.S.-built cells.
Now Heliene is working on its boldest move yet: a $200 million solar-cell factory to be built somewhere in the U.S. in partnership with India’s Premier Energies. But Heliene founder and CEO Martin Pochtaruk told Canary Media in January that he couldn’t make the final call on that plant given the uncertainty around what will happen to Biden-era tax credits under Trump.
Building a cell factory requires a significant step up in dollars and complexity compared with a module-assembly plant, Pochtaruk explained. Putting panels together is a largely mechanical task that costs around $30 million of capital investment for every GW of production, he said.
Solar-cell production costs more than four times that, at about $130 million per GW, Pochtaruk noted. “It’s a chemical process that is much more complex. You need to build a clean room that is similar to an operating room, but industrial-sized.”
Cell production exposes silicon wafers to chemicals in liquid and gaseous forms, which must unfold in precisely calibrated environments, Pachtaruk added. Water used in the process requires treatment before it can be reused or sent to the sewer. The equipment to do all these things drives up costs relative to module assembly and makes permitting more complicated.
That raises the stakes for anyone looking to put their chips on the table for American solar-cell production — even if they’ve already found success in their panel-assembly bets. The prospects of financing these bigger bets are intimately tied to the future of federal manufacturing tax credits, part of the Biden policies that Trump has vowed to dismantle.
Even successful solar manufacturers typically don’t want to fork over their own cash for the hefty expense of a new cell factory. They turn to lenders to finance construction costs. But lenders have a hard time loaning money to a type of business without much of a track record to evaluate, and the current U.S. cell-manufacturing landscape is mostly nonexistent.
Cell manufacturers have something else going for them, though: the 45X tax credit. As enacted in the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022, 45X awards a set amount of money for each key solar component that a company makes in the country in a given year. If the manufacturer doesn’t have enough tax liability to absorb all that credit, it can sell the credits to another entity, generating cash to pay down debt or invest in further expansion.
Heliene pulled that off last fall with 45X credits from module production and netted about $50 million from the transaction.
Financial institutions mulling a $100 million–plus loan to a solar-cell manufacturer want to use the future 45X credit as collateral, Pochtaruk said. Future cell sales may be hard to predict, but a guaranteed payout based on the number of cells produced is easy to model (at least in a world where the U.S. government honors legally binding contracts and pays its obligations).
“Lenders will not agree to come forward until there’s clarity” on the long-term status of the tax credits, Pochtaruk said. So Heliene is still finalizing a location in the U.S., tabulating construction costs, and then will need to make a final call on the investment by late April. A Premier Energies executive told investors Monday that the plan is on pause pending clarity on the fate of the tax credits.
The potential loss of tax credits may be less consequential to companies like Qcells, which can draw construction funds from its corporate parent, Korea’s Hanwha. A smaller solar-focused company like Heliene doesn’t have other corporate coffers to rely on in lieu of tax-credit–based financing.
It’s still entirely possible that the credits will survive. Under normal circumstances, it would take a new act of Congress to undo them. A cadre of Republicans in Congress has publicly urged leadership to preserve them, based on the economic benefits they bring to their districts. Meanwhile, SEIA coordinated a lobbying push on Capitol Hill Wednesday to meet with more than 100 members of Congress or staff to urge them to protect the credits.
The current uncertainty, though, is at the very least delaying the commitment of more private funds to build solar-cell factories. Those projects — and the high-tech, well-paying manufacturing jobs they come with — could collapse altogether if the situation persists or Congress undoes the recently created tax credits.
Canary Media’s chart of the week translates crucial data about the clean energy transition into a visual format.
Nearly $2.1 trillion was invested in the global energy transition in 2024 — the highest-ever annual amount.
Last year’s total energy-transition investment was 11% higher than in 2023 and more than double what was spent in 2020, per BloombergNEF.
Most of this money is flowing to two energy-transition sectors: electrified transportation and clean energy.
More than $757 billion was invested in passenger and commercial EVs, electric two- and three-wheelers, and public EV-charging stations. That’s a 20% increase from 2023. Another $728 billion was spent on renewable energy projects ranging from wind to solar to hydropower, a record high but only about 8% more than in 2023. Energy-storage spending, meanwhile, surged 36% last year to nearly $54 billion.
The third-biggest category was power grids, which need to grow in every country to accommodate the rapid expansion of clean energy. Just over $390 billion was invested in 2024 on expanding and retooling grids across the world, up about 15% compared with the year prior.
While funding for these mature energy-transition technologies reached new heights in 2024, earlier-stage climate technologies had a rougher year. Spending on carbon capture and storage was less than half of what it was in 2023. Investment in hydrogen and clean-industry projects was also cut almost in half.
China alone accounted for nearly 40% of last year’s energy-transition investment, outpacing the U.S., EU, and U.K. combined. China also grew its spending faster than any other major country or region last year, while in the EU and the U.K., the sector attracted less money than in the prior year.
By a different measure, from the International Energy Agency, energy-transition investment is now far exceeding funding for fossil-fuel projects. That’s a good thing for the global bid to eliminate use of planet-warming fossil fuels. But even last year’s record-setting pace is not enough to decarbonize the planet. More is needed, the IEA says, especially in developing nations.
Canary Media’s chart of the week translates crucial data about the clean energy transition into a visual format.
The amount of carbon-free energy built in the U.S. last year far eclipsed the growth of new fossil-fueled power plants.
The U.S. grid added a total of just over 56 gigawatts of power capacity last year. A whopping 96 percent of that came from solar, battery, wind, nuclear, and other carbon-free installations, per new Cleanview analysis of U.S. Energy Information Administration data.
Solar installations dominated power plant additions — 34 gigawatts of utility-scale solar were constructed across the U.S., a 74 percent jump from 2023’s record-high year. Texas and California drove most of this surge.
Grid batteries were the next-biggest new source of power capacity — and saw the fastest growth. The U.S. built 13 GW of energy storage last year, almost double 2023’s record-shattering 6.6 GW. Texas and California led the way here as well.
Wind was the third-biggest source of new capacity, but installations dropped for the fourth year in a row as the industry continued to struggle through lingering supply-chain issues, a plodding interconnection process, and local opposition to projects. Just 2.4 GW of new gas and 1 GW of nuclear went online in 2024.
The U.S. has rolled out more clean energy than fossil-fueled power plants for years now, helping the grid get cleaner and less carbon-intensive. Power emissions have fallen steadily since peaking in 2007 as fossil gas and renewables have replaced coal.
Still, fossil fuels generate the majority of the country’s power and the U.S. faces an uphill battle to decarbonize its grid by 2035, a goal set by outgoing President Joe Biden.
Fossil gas is currently the top source of electricity generation in the U.S., and last year emissions from its use in the rose nearly 4 percent. As big tech firms look to build more energy-intensive data centers to support their AI goals, the sector could become even more reliant on fossil fuels. That surging power demand is already extending the life of coal plants and causing utilities to propose building more gas-fired power plants.
In order to eliminate carbon emissions from the grid, the U.S. is going to need to figure out how to build enough clean energy to dethrone fossil fuels. That was a hard task even when Biden was president and before the AI-driven electricity boom took hold. It will be an even taller task under incoming President Donald Trump, who has vowed to double down on fossil fuels.
OFFSHORE WIND: Maine’s plans to develop a floating offshore wind industry are at a pivotal point, as researchers refine equipment and wait for regulatory approval to sell power generated by a planned test array. (Maine Monitor)
ALSO: Maryland regulators approve a request to increase the amount of power produced by a planned wind farm off the Maryland and Delaware coast. (WBOC)
CLIMATE:
GRID:
POLITICS: Energy policy debates will take center stage in the Maryland legislature this year as the state tries, all at once, to rein in rising prices, meet clean energy goals, and ensure enough power generation. (Maryland Matters)
EFFICIENCY: Vermont’s program providing weatherization funding for low-income residents is running low on money as federal funds dry up. (Vermont Public)
TRANSPORTATION: New York City’s congestion pricing has reduced traffic in the central business district by more than 8%, but is also expected to redirect traffic into some of the city’s poorest neighborhoods, increasing pollution in places that already bear heavy environmental burdens. (Streetsblog, Inside Climate News)
RENEWABLES: Environmental justice advocates in New York City push the state’s power authority to plan more renewable energy projects in the city to reduce the use of fossil fuel peaker plants. (Inside Climate News)
SOLAR: A New York appellate court rules a town’s attempt to block a commercial solar development runs counter to state mandates to increase renewable power use. (Times Union)
COMMENTARY: The offshore wind industry in Maine can attract investment, support economic development, and create jobs, regardless of environmental benefits, says a newspaper editorial board. (Portland Press Herald)
RENEWABLES: The U.S. Interior Department institutes a 60-day pause on approvals for leases, rights of way, and contracts for clean energy projects on public land and waters. (The Hill)
ELECTRIC VEHICLES:
GRID:
OFFSHORE WIND:
OVERSIGHT: “It’s very bureaucratic and it’s very slow”: During a trip to view damage from Hurricane Helene, President Trump suggests abolishing the Federal Emergency Management Agency and leaving disaster response to states. (Blue Ridge Public Radio, Politico)SOLAR:
EFFICIENCY: U.S. residents bought 37% more heat pumps than gas furnaces in the first 11 months of last year, marking the electric appliances’ biggest lead over fossil fuel heating yet. (Canary Media)
OIL & GAS: The Navajo Nation files a lawsuit challenging the Biden administration’s 2023 ban on new federal oil and gas leases around a New Mexico historical site, saying it causes financial hardship. (E&E News, subscription)
A recent ruling by a Wisconsin appeals court closes the door on the long-standing battle for third-party-owned solar in the state — at least for the near future, as disappointed advocates see it.
On Jan. 3, the court dismissed ongoing legal proceedings regarding a Stevens Point family’s efforts to buy electricity from solar panels that would have been installed on their home but owned by a solar company. The arrangement, known as third-party solar, allows customers access to solar power without the upfront cost of installing panels.
The family moved before their case concluded, though, making it “moot” in the court’s opinion. Advocates had hoped a court decision could still clarify that under existing law third-party-owned solar is indeed legal, but those hopes are now dashed.
“I think this road is at a dead end at this point,” said Will Kenworthy, Midwest regional director for Vote Solar, which had brought a petition before the Public Service Commission of Wisconsin on the family’s behalf, asking the commission to affirm their right to do the project. “We had a chance to resolve it once and for all, and we made the effort to get it this far, then had the carpet pulled out from underneath us.”
In late 2022, the Public Service Commission ruled in favor of the family, who wanted to install rooftop solar that would be owned by North Wind Renewable Energy Cooperative, a developer based nearby.
After the commission decision, the Wisconsin Utilities Association filed a lawsuit challenging the commission’s ruling, arguing such arrangements violate utilities’ monopoly rights to provide power.
A trial court remanded the issue back to the commission for further information. Vote Solar, represented by the Environmental Law & Policy Center, appealed that ruling and hoped the appeals court would affirm the commission’s decision.
But when the Public Service Commission members found out that the family had moved without installing solar, they withdrew the decision on their case.
“It closes this phase of the very long and ongoing saga here to clarify the law for third-party financing,” said ELPC Senior Attorney Brad Klein. “What’s frustrating with this setback is a lot of work went into teeing up a strong legal case for the commission and the courts. It got knocked out on a procedural non-substantive issue on the status of the customers, which leaves the rest of Wisconsin customers in the dark on the lawfulness of this tool.”
The commission’s decision on the Stevens Point case had applied only to that particular project. But advocates thought the move could pave the way for others to do third-party-owned solar.
“The hope with that decision was it would serve as a precedent — if this one family can do it, then a second family, a third family, a fourth family could do it too,” said John Albers, a director at Advanced Energy United, which filed an amicus brief in the case. “The frustrating part is none of this should be happening. Wisconsin is an outlier — you’ve got Michigan, Illinois, and Iowa that all allow third-party ownership.”
Nationwide, third-party ownership makes solar more accessible for many households, nonprofits, churches, schools, and government agencies since the solar developer or other third-party owner pays the upfront costs and reaps the tax incentives while providing power and passing on energy bill savings to the resident or nonprofit.
The direct-pay provision in the Inflation Reduction Act makes third-party ownership less crucial for nonprofit entities including government agencies since direct payments — unlike tax incentives — can be tapped even if one doesn’t pay taxes. But the paperwork requirements for direct pay can be onerous, and under the Trump administration, pieces of the IRA may be rolled back.
Advocates have long argued that existing Wisconsin law actually does allow for third-party-owned solar. But without clarity from a government authority, utilities have refused to interconnect third-party-owned solar arrays, and developers have been reluctant or unwilling to explore the arrangement with customers.
A legal battle over Eagle Point Solar’s plans to do a third-party-owned solar project with the city of Milwaukee, for example, has been before the Public Service Commission and in the courts for years.
Kenworthy said advocates were hoping the commission and appellate court would offer “an interpretation of statute that avoids this preposterous outcome that someone putting a small solar array on someone’s roof is suddenly constituting a utility.”
“We think it’s as urgent as ever to get third-party ownership available to the people of Wisconsin. We’re still interested in trying to figure out if there’s a way we can address it,” Kenworthy continued. That could mean another resident attempting third-party-owned solar, a lengthy and frustrating undertaking, as the Stevens Point family saw.
“It was illustrative of the problem people are facing,” Kenworthy said. “Getting solar on a residential rooftop is a tough choice anyway, and when you have that type of uncertainty out there it really is a deterrent.”
In an amicus brief, Advanced Energy United had made the case that residential third-party-owned solar would benefit all ratepayers and could reduce reliance on planned new gas plants in Wisconsin. The group is among many that have filed testimony opposing a $1.2 billion new gas peaker plant that the utility WEPCO plans to build at the site of its Oak Creek coal plant.
“Really, the more behind-the-meter solar you have in Wisconsin, the better for all ratepayers,” he said. “Utilities wouldn’t need to spend as much on new generation if homeowners were able to generate at home.”
In years past, advocates have pleaded with the legislature, courts, and commission to offer clarity on third-party ownership, so far to no avail. The Public Service Commission declined to rule on a petition from the Midwest Renewable Energy Association seeking to develop third-party-owned solar, noting that the association did not have a specific project contract.
“The problem remains unresolved, and it’s going to require some additional work over time, but we are going to continue pushing,” Klein said. “I’m confident in the long-term outcome because I think we’re right on the law. We don’t know if the next effort will mirror this one, which was an attempt to be responsive to the commission’s request to bring a specific case to them. We may do that again, or there’s other avenues. Certainly, the legislature could act. There are other ways the commission could act. We’ll be exploring all of those options.”
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