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A new study, led by researchers at Columbia University and Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI), identifies a diverse set of molecules released by marine phytoplankton that fuel microbial life and help drive Earth’s carbon cycle. While scientists know that carbon is moved through an invisible network of phytoplankton and other microbes in the surface ocean, the specific compounds have long been a mystery. These compounds are small, chemically difficult to detect in salty seawater, and are rapidly consumed by other organisms almost as soon as they are produced.
Phytoplankton, a type of microscopic organism, take in carbon dioxide and convert it into organic carbon through photosynthesis, like plants. Each year, this process moves many tens of billions of tons of carbon through the sunlit surface ocean and contributes to the oxygen in the air we breathe. These massive natural carbon flows highlight the central role the surface ocean plays in regulating Earth’s carbon cycle.
“For this study, we placed six phytoplankton species representing major groups of marine phytoplankton under controlled conditions. They had the nutrients and light they needed to grow,” said Yuting Zhu, co-lead author of the study and former WHOI postdoctoral investigator, now with Old Dominion University. “Using a chemical-tagging method developed at WHOI, we were able to quantify the composition of biologically available small molecules released by globally abundant microorganisms.”
These compounds accounted for up to 23% of the dissolved organic carbon that phytoplankton released and may support a substantial share of microbial metabolism in the global ocean.
However, many bacteria are metabolic specialists, or picky eaters. The study found that different phytoplankton species release distinct combinations of metabolites, including carbon compounds also containing nitrogen, phosphorus, and sulfur. Because bacteria vary in which molecules they can consume, the chemical “menu” produced by phytoplankton helps determine which microbial communities thrive in different parts of the ocean.
“The findings help illuminate a long-standing mystery about the composition of the ‘chemical currencies’ that are moved by microbes in the surface ocean,” said microbial oceanographer Sonya Dyhrman, a researcher at Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, which is part of the Columbia Climate School, and professor of Earth and environmental sciences. “I think of it as a microbial carbon economy. By identifying the currencies produced by phytoplankton, scientists can begin to build more realistic representations of how marine microbial communities cycle billions of tons of carbon.”
To explore the broader implications, the team, also including researchers from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Marine Biological Laboratory, combined laboratory measurements with global ecosystem modeling. Their results suggest that phytoplankton-derived metabolites could supply up to 5 percent of the daily carbon needs of SAR11, one of the most abundant groups of bacteria in the surface ocean.
“Combining the ecological and chemical approaches here allowed us to view the system through a new lens,” said co-lead author Hanna Anderson, a researcher at Lamont and PhD candidate in Earth and environmental sciences at Columbia. “Thinking synthetically about how these carbon substrates can mediate interactions between phytoplankton and heterotrophs, which in turn cycle this carbon within the marine food web.”
The research was conducted as part of the National Science Foundation-funded Center for Chemical Currencies of a Microbial Planet, a science and technology center that investigates how small molecules govern interactions among microorganisms across Earth’s ecosystems.
“Understanding these exchanges is critical because a huge portion of Earth’s carbon cycle passes through this microbial system, but we still don’t fully understand it,” said the center’s director and co-author of the study, WHOI senior scientist Elizabeth Kujawinski. “If we understand what molecules phytoplankton release and what molecules bacteria can take up, we can start building models of how these organisms interact. We think of the surface ocean as a network, where phytoplankton and bacteria are connected by molecules—some compounds feed many different bacteria, while others only support a few.”
Future studies will investigate how environmental conditions such as nutrient limitation, temperature changes, and ocean acidification alter the molecules that phytoplankton release and how microbial communities respond to those “chemical currencies.”
This article was adapted from a press release by the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution.
06.03.2026 - Global warming has accelerated since 2015, according to a new study by the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK). After accounting for known natural influences on global temperature, the research team detected a statistically significant acceleration of the warming trend for the first time. Over the past ten years, the estimated warming rate has been around 0.35°C per decade, depending on the dataset, compared with just under 0.2°C per decade on average from 1970 to 2015. This recent rate is higher than in any previous decade since the beginning of instrumental records in 1880.
“We can now demonstrate a strong and statistically significant acceleration of global warming since around 2015,” says Grant Foster, a US statistics expert and co-author of the study, which was published today in the scientific journal Geophysical Research Letters.
“We filter out known natural influences in the observational data, so that the ‘noise’ is reduced, making the underlying long-term warming signal more clearly visible,” Foster added.
Short-term natural fluctuations in global temperature caused by El Niño, volcanic eruptions, and solar cycles can mask changes in the long-term rate of warming. In their data analysis, which is based on measurement data, the two researchers work with five large, established global temperature data sets (NASA, NOAA, HadCRUT, Berkeley Earth, ERA5).
“The adjusted data show an acceleration of global warming since 2015 with a statistical certainty of over 98 percent, consistent across all data sets examined and independent of the analysis method chosen,” explains Stefan Rahmstorf, PIK researcher and lead author of the study.
After correcting for the effects of El Niño and the solar maximum, 2023 and 2024, which were exceptionally warm years, become somewhat cooler, but remain the two warmest years since the beginning of instrumental records. In all datasets, the acceleration begins to become apparent in 2013 or 2014. To test whether the warming rate has changed since the 1970s, the research team applied two statistical approaches: a quadratic trend analysis and a piecewise linear model that objectively determines the timing of any change in the warming rate.
The study does not investigate the specific causes of the observed acceleration. However, climate models show that an increasing rate of warming is fundamentally within the scope of current climate modelling, according to the authors.
“If the warming rate of the past 10 years continues, it would lead to a long-term exceedance of the 1.5° limit of the Paris Agreement before 2030,” says Stefan Rahmstorf. “How quickly the Earth continues to warm ultimately depends on how rapidly we reduce global CO₂ emissions from fossil fuels to zero."
Winter winds lofted clouds of dust from the Sahara Desert, carrying it north toward the Mediterranean and dispersing it widely across Europe in March 2026. When the dust combined with moisture-laden weather systems, a dirty rain fell in parts of Spain, France, and the United Kingdom.
This animation highlights the concentration and movement of dust throughout the region from March 1 to March 9. It depicts dust column mass density—a measure of the amount of dust contained in a column of air—produced with a version of the GEOS (Goddard Earth Observing System) model. The model integrates satellite data with mathematical equations that represent physical processes in the atmosphere.
The animation shows dust plumes originating in northwestern Africa being blown both to the west across the Atlantic Ocean and north toward the Mediterranean. As plumes spread throughout Western Europe over several days, people observed hazy skies from southern England, where sunrises and sunsets took on an eerie glow, to the Alps in Switzerland and Italy, where a dust layer encroached on the Matterhorn.
Not all of the dust remained aloft. Storms encountered some of the dust, causing particles to fall to the ground with rain and coat surfaces with a brownish residue. A low-pressure system, named Storm Regina by Portugal’s weather service, moved across the Iberian Peninsula and brought so-called blood rain to southern and eastern Spain, along with parts of France and the southern UK in early March, according to news reports.
Over the Mediterranean, areas of “dusty cirrus” clouds developed higher in the atmosphere, where dust particles can act as condensation nuclei for ice crystals, according to MeteoSwiss, Switzerland’s Federal Office for Meteorology and Climatology. Scientists are studying these clouds to better understand their formation and how they affect weather, climate, and even solar power generation.
In a new analysis, researchers used NASA’s MERRA-2 (Modern-Era Retrospective Analysis for Research and Applications, Version 2), observations from MODIS (Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer), and other satellite products to parse the effect of airborne Saharan dust on solar power in Hungary. They found that photovoltaic performance dropped to 46 percent on high-dust days, compared with 75 percent or more on low-dust days. They determined the greatest losses occurred because dust enhanced the presence and reflectance of cirrus clouds and reduced the amount of radiation that reached solar panels.
Some research suggests more frequent and intense wintertime dust events have affected Europe in recent years. Researchers have proposed several factors contributing to these outbreaks, including drier-than-normal conditions in northwestern Africa and weather patterns more often driving winds north from the Sahara.
NASA Earth Observatory animation by Lauren Dauphin, using GEOS-FP data from the Global Modeling and Assimilation Office at NASA GSFC. Story by Lindsey Doermann.
This article originally appeared on Inside Climate News(hyperlink to the original story), a nonprofit, non-partisan news organization that covers climate, energy and the environment. Sign up for their newsletter here.
U.S. Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) launched an investigation into the discrepancy between reported and observed methane pollution from the Permian Basin—the largest-producing oil field in the United States and one of the largest in the world.
The investigation, announced Wednesday, follows a recent report by MethaneSAT, a short-lived methane-sensing satellite launched by the Environmental Defense Fund, Harvard University and others in 2024. That report, released in early February, found that methane emissions from oil and gas production facilities in the Permian Basin from May 2024 to June 2025 were four times higher than the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s official estimates.
“The inconsistency between emissions reported to EPA’s Greenhouse [Gas] Inventory and satellite data suggest that significant, previously unreported emissions may be occurring,” Whitehouse, the ranking member of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, said in a written statement. As a result, “substantial opportunities exist to reduce waste, improve operational efficiency, and mitigate climate change.”
Methane is a climate super-pollutant. Over 80 times more effective at warming the planet than carbon dioxide in the first two decades after its release, it is the second-leading driver of climate change. Its emissions also pose serious public health risks, contribute to smog formation and negatively impact agricultural production.
Whitehouse requested information by April 1 from eight leading oil and gas producers in the Permian Basin of West Texas and southeastern New Mexico—EOG Resources, ConocoPhillips, Occidental Petroleum, ExxonMobil, Diamondback Energy, Devon Energy, Chevron and Mewbourne Oil Company. The senator asked each company about the steps they are taking to address methane pollution in the region, how they monitor and measure their own emissions and their current estimates.
“We appreciate the Senator’s interest in this important topic and look forward to working with him to achieve our shared goal of increasing global supplies of natural gas and reducing cost for consumers and industry,” Allison Cook, a spokesperson for Chevron, said in an email.
A spokesperson for EOG Resources shared the company’s 2024 sustainability report, which noted a low rate of methane emissions, 0.04 percent of total U.S. gas production.
None of the other companies responded to a request for comment from Inside Climate News.
A spokesperson for S&P Global Energy, a research firm that focuses on energy, commodities and financial information, said the discrepancy relates to how the EPA requires emissions data to be reported. An S&P Global report published last year concluded methane emissions from the Permian Basin declined by nearly 20 percent from 2022 to 2024 as oil and gas production grew.
Sharon Wilson, executive director of the nonprofit organization Oilfield Witness, which uses optical gas imaging cameras to reveal emissions of methane and other pollutants in the Permian Basin and elsewhere, cautioned that the S&P Global report had not undergone the peer-review process customary for studies published in academic journals.
MethaneSAT’s findings hadn’t been confirmed through a peer-reviewed study published in an academic journal at the time of their release in February. However, a MethaneSAT study that includes data from the Permian is currently under review by the journal EGUsphere.
Steven Hamburg, chief scientist at the Environmental Defense Fund and MethaneSAT project lead, said emissions from the region are “very large” and the intensity, or rate of emissions, exceeds industry targets for emission reductions.
“Bottom line emissions are far too high, and it is technically and economically feasible to reduce emissions drastically,” Hamburg said in a written statement.
Two of the companies questioned by Whitehouse, ExxonMobil and Occidental Petroleum, have pledged to reduce methane emissions to 0.2 percent of total gas brought to market by 2030 under the Oil and Gas Decarbonization Charter, a voluntary industry group. MethaneSAT reported a significantly higher rate of emissions—2.4 percent of total marketed gas—for the entire Permian Basin.
A spokesperson for the Oil and Gas Decarbonization Charter did not respond to a request for additional information other than providing a link to the group’s 2025 annual report.
All of the companies except Mewbourne Oil are members of the Oil and Gas Methane Partnership 2.0, a global emissions-reduction program for oil and gas companies overseen by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP). Member companies commit to an individual methane reduction target, based either on absolute emissions volume or methane intensity.
A UNEP spokesperson said they support measurement data provided by efforts such as MethaneSAT. “The transparency provided by this data is essential for industry to effectively manage emissions and for consumers, investors and others to make informed decisions,” the spokesperson said in an email.
In a press release announcing the investigation, Whitehouse stated that reducing methane emissions “can largely be done at no net cost.” Methane is the primary component of natural gas, a valuable commodity whose price has spiked due to the ongoing U.S.-Israel war in Iran.
Wilson challenged the notion of reducing emissions at little to no cost, noting that methane is considered a byproduct in the Permian Basin and that a significant buildout of additional infrastructure, along with increased equipment maintenance, would be needed. Oil is the primary commodity in the region. Pipelines needed to bring gas to market are often insufficient, resulting in a large volume of gas being flared rather than sold.
Wilson emphasized that producing oil and gas inevitably releases pollution, and permitting new sites will lead to elevated levels.
Whitehouse said stronger federal oversight is needed.
“Fossil fuel companies can’t be trusted to control their dangerous methane leakage,” he said. “There’s a significant discrepancy between reported and tracked methane emissions in the Permian Basin that demands further investigation.”
This story was produced by Grist and co-published with The Texas Observer. Sign up for Grist’s weekly newsletter and for the Texas Observer’s weekly newsletter.
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.
Around the country, community solar has emerged as a way to bring clean, affordable power to people who aren’t able to access rooftop solar, primarily because it’s too expensive or they aren’t homeowners.
But in California, a widely supported plan to get subscription-based multi-megawatt solar-battery projects off the ground has languished for years — despite a state law passed in 2022 meant to spur more development.
That’s because state utility regulators have failed to comply with the legislation, a delay that isn’t just flouting the intent of state lawmakers; it is also threatening to undermine California’s clean energy and energy affordability goals.
So said supporters of the law during a February hearing at the state Capitol that gave lawmakers the opportunity to evaluate whether the measures that they authored are being implemented effectively. The law’s proponents placed the blame on the California Public Utilities Commission and demanded that the agency fix its mistakes.
“Community solar has incredible potential to reduce rates across the board, reduce net peak demands, avoid long transmission investments, displace expensive gas generations, and be built quickly,” said California State Assembly Member Chris Ward. The San Diego Democrat authored AB 2316, that 2022 law ordering state regulators to unblock the stagnant community-solar market.
Though the legislative direction was clear, “the projects aren’t there,” Ward said. “The bill credits aren’t there. The prevailing-wage jobs aren’t there.” In his view, that represents “a dismissal of California’s need for clean, reliable, and affordable energy.”
Ward is not alone in his frustration. AB 2316 was backed by a who’s who of California energy-policy stakeholders — solar advocacy groups, environmental organizations, consumer advocates, commercial real estate companies, farming industry associations, homebuilder industry groups, utility workers’ labor unions, and Republican and Democratic state lawmakers. That broad coalition coalesced behind a detailed plan developed by community solar groups, called the Net Value Billing Tariff, to carry out the law.
The NVBT was designed to reward community solar projects that store power in batteries, which California desperately needs to capture midday solar power for use during summer evenings, when energy use peaks.
But California’s three major utilities were against the plan — and the CPUC sided with them. In a 2024 decision, the commission rejected the NVBT, claiming that it would unfairly burden utility customers at large with excess costs.
Instead, the CPUC took up a plan that Ward described as “fatally flawed.” It introduced a structure that would pay community solar-and-battery developers on the basis of wholesale power rates, which provide far lower revenues to projects. However, similar compensation structures available in California for decades have failed to generate projects.
Because of that structure, the CPUC’s plan — unlike the NVBT — doesn’t provide any incentives for developers to add batteries to their midsize solar projects. That’s a major gap, given that the state needs gigawatts of energy storage to meet its clean energy goals.
What’s more, the CPUC is years behind schedule on delivering a program based on the flawed concept it embraced, Ward said. AB 2316 set a mid-2024 deadline to create a workable community solar-battery program. But the agency doesn’t anticipate having one ready until this summer, he said.
“We’ve had some steps along the way that have certainly, you know, disappointed me, as the author, and many of our stakeholders that worked hard on this,” Ward said at the hearing.
Last year, Ward introduced legislation that would have required the CPUC to revisit its decision on community solar and storage. That bill failed to emerge from a process known as “suspense,” during which the Legislature’s appropriations committees can amend or shelve bills with no debate or transparency.
Ward is planning to reintroduce similar legislation in the coming weeks that would instruct regulators to “implement a program that is going to produce the outcomes we’re expecting,” he told Canary Media in an interview earlier this month.
“Left unchecked, we’ve lost faith that they are interested in producing a program that is workable,” he said. “It’s very frustrating. If they need legislation that’s more specific in its direction, that’s what we’ll have to do.”
Kerry Fleisher, the CPUC’s director of distributed energy resources, defended the agency’s actions at last month’s hearing. She cited analysis proffered by utilities and by the CPUC’s Public Advocates Office, which is tasked with protecting utility customers, that found that the NVBT ran the risk of increasing costs for customers of the state’s three big utilities.
“These are costs that end up on all customer bills,” Fleisher said. “So we need to be really mindful at this time, when affordability is such a challenge, to keep costs as low as possible.”
Shelly Lyser, a program manager at the Public Advocates Office, echoed that position. “Cost shifts are created when programs subsidized by all ratepayers do not create greater or equal benefits for all ratepayers,” she said. Rates can increase when the majority of a program’s “benefits accrue to one or a narrow set of customers” — in this case, subscribers to community solar-plus-storage projects.
But Ward and other backers of community solar-battery projects say that the CPUC has cherry-picked its data and tailored its analysis to make the NVBT appear more costly than it would actually be. In last month’s hearing, Ward pointed out that 22 states and Washington, D.C., have created community solar programs that have resulted in gigawatts of projects — far more than California has been able to build — without any complaints about unfairness. Some of the states with the largest programs, including New York and Massachusetts, use structures similar to that of the NVBT, he said.
At the same time, no other state has adopted the wholesale rate structure that the CPUC has proposed, Ward said, largely because it can’t offer project developers the revenues they need in order to remain profitable while offering subscribing customers lower bills.
In fact, the CPUC’s plan relied on $250 million in federal Solar for All grants to be cost-effective, he noted, while such an outside funding boost hasn’t been required by those 22 other community solar programs.
The Trump administration canceled these Solar for All grants, last year, putting that plan in jeopardy. California and other grant recipients have brought legal challenges to recover the funds, but the outcome is unlikely to be resolved quickly.
All this represents a “huge missed opportunity and a failure of leadership,” Matt Freedman, an attorney at The Utility Reform Network, a nonprofit that represents the interests of utility customers and supports AB 2316, said at the hearing.
“Despite the clear directives in AB 2316, the PUC embraced a nonviable, noncompliant, and incomplete community renewable-energy program that was designed to fail and perhaps never even meant to launch,” he said. “The Legislature is going to need to lead here, perhaps with additional statutory direction and greater oversight.”
This debate over California’s plan for community solar and batteries is unfolding as the state faces increasing pressure to expand its clean energy portfolio. The CPUC has prioritized building utility-scale solar-battery projects as well as other carbon-free resources to meet residents’ needs. But leaving midsize solar and accompanying battery projects off the table is a bad idea, backers of community clean-energy projects say.
During the hearing, Fleisher highlighted the progress that California is making on large-scale clean energy, with an estimated 5 gigawatts of solar and more than 4 gigawatts of solar-plus-storage projects projected to be added by 2029. In the CPUC’s estimation, utility-scale projects are “where the economics make the most sense,” she said, because of economies of scale and competition between developers to provide the lowest-cost projects possible.
Earlier this month, the CPUC released its latest plan for meeting its clean energy and grid-reliability goals, calling on the state’s utilities and community choice aggregators to secure 6 gigawatts of new clean energy and storage by 2032. That plan also stipulates “incremental transmission system upgrades” meant to boost a series of grid expansions already being planned by the state’s grid operator.
But in a November report on the state’s progress toward its long-term clean energy goals, the CPUC found that utility-scale projects have been stalled because transmission grid upgrades that were approved years ago are still incomplete. Those include 13.2 gigawatts in projects that “have already been delayed or are at risk of delay due to delayed transmission project timelines.”
Such slowdowns are exacerbating the yearslong interconnection wait times for solar and battery installations in California. That’s not surprising, given the massive challenges involved in building new transmission lines, as well as the interconnection problems plaguing grid operators around the country, not just in California.
But it’s also a warning for California regulators not to exclusively rely on transmission-connected clean energy to meet its goals, TURN’s Freedman said at the hearing. Finding alternatives to utility-scale projects is even more important in the face of the Trump administration’s efforts to block utility-scale clean energy projects “as part of its war against solar energy,” he said.
Community solar-battery projects could help meet California’s need for clean energy and grid reliability much faster and more cheaply than relying on utility-scale projects alone. According to a 2025 analysis by consultancy Aurora Energy Research, commissioned by the trade group Coalition for Community Solar Access, deploying 5.4 gigawatts of community solar and storage projects across the state would deliver about $6.5 billion in electricity system cost savings over the next two decades.
That’s even though community solar-battery projects cost more per megawatt to build than utility-scale equivalents, James McGarry, western regional director for the Coalition for Community Solar Access, said at the hearing. But the community-power projects can be built more quickly and without costly and time-consuming transmission upgrades on parts of the grid that are closer to customers.
Fleisher said the CPUC hasn’t reviewed the Aurora Energy Research analysis. Nor has the agency conducted an analysis of how the costs of its proposal for community solar compare with those of utility-scale solar. But she reiterated a data point provided by utility Southern California Edison, claiming that the cost of compensating community solar-battery developers under the NVBT would be two and a half times higher than the cost of compensating a project under the CPUC’s preferred wholesale rate.
That statement drew a rebuke from Democratic Assembly Member Cottie Petrie-Norris, who is chair of the Assembly Utilities and Energy Committee and represents Orange County. She pointed out that under the CPUC’s preferred plan, “we’re not going to bring any new resources onto the grid, if I understand correctly. So saying that there was an alternative that was going to be two and a half times more expensive isn’t super relevant.”
Petrie-Norris also said: “My big takeaway is that we just need to get to a single version of the math around all of this. Otherwise, I think we’re going to continue to have pieces of legislation get introduced that are implemented in ways that are inconsistent with legislators’ understanding of where we’re moving.”
Brandon Smithwood, vice president of policy at community solar developer Dimension Energy, highlighted the challenges of attempting to build community solar projects under the state’s existing regimes. Dimension completed three such projects, in California’s Central Valley, under a program structure that was shuttered by the CPUC in 2024.
Those projects have, however, offered low-income subscribers in nearby communities significant reductions in their utility bills. “We’ve seen what can actually come from projects when they do work,” he said. “What has been proposed by the CPUC, particularly with no funding forthcoming, is not going to work.”
In Washington state, the Trump administration’s crusade to force aging coal plants to stay online is meeting resistance from lawmakers — and confronting the reality that the state’s power grid is doing just fine without coal.
On Monday, the Department of Energy issued its second 90-day emergency order demanding the continued operation of Unit 2 of TransAlta’s power plant in Centralia, in southwestern Washington. The DOE had first ordered the facility to keep running in December, the same month it was set to stop burning coal under an agreement with the state that’s been in place since 2011.
The order comes less than one week after Gov. Bob Ferguson, a Democrat, signed legislation that would impose hefty costs on TransAlta should the Centralia facility begin running again. The law, which passed Washington’s Democratic-controlled legislature in February, revokes TransAlta’s exemption from a requirement to buy allowances under the state’s cap-and-trade program. It also eliminates an exemption that allowed TransAlta to avoid paying the state sales tax on the coal it burns at the Centralia plant.
These changes will make it “extremely expensive for them to generate power at that facility,” Washington state Rep. Joe Fitzgibbon, the bill’s lead sponsor, told Heatmap News last week. Fitzgibbon, a Democrat, added that the goal was to forestall the threat of the Trump administration getting “more aggressive” in its use of emergency power by putting the state “in a stronger position to ensure that the plant did not restart operations.”
The DOE has trotted out familiar justifications for ordering the Centralia plant to continue operating. The Monday order stated that the “reliable supply of power from the Centralia plant is essential to maintaining grid stability across the Northwest, and this order ensures that the region avoids unnecessary blackout risks and costs.”
But no such risks exist. According to an Environmental Defense Fund analysis of power generation data from the DOE’s Energy Information Administration, the Centralia plant hasn’t generated any meaningful electric power since January. The state has not suffered from any grid emergencies or supply shortfalls so far this year.
“The data proves that forcing this coal plant to stay open is just a wasteful charade,” Ted Kelly, the Environmental Defense Fund’s director and lead counsel for U.S. clean energy, said in a Tuesday press release. “The Centralia plant hasn’t been producing any power over this supposed ‘emergency’ period because the grid has more than enough electricity without it — yet families and businesses will bear the costs of keeping it operational.”
There’s little reason to expect the state will need the power plant over the next three months, either, Kelly told Canary Media. “We’re heading into the spring period, when there’s generally less demand than during the winter period, and at a time when we have robust hydropower reserves,” he said.
TransAlta President and CEO John Kousinioris echoed this view in a February earnings call. He said that the company was “fully in compliance with the order in the sense of being available, should we be asked to run.” However, he added that TransAlta doesn’t expect to operate the plant this spring, given “how flush the hydro situation is in Washington state right now.”
TransAlta is one of six fossil-fueled power plants forced to remain in operation by Energy Secretary Chris Wright under Section 202(c) of the Federal Power Act. Before last year, DOE had used that emergency authority only temporarily on request from utilities and grid operators facing immediate energy threats.
Wright has taken the unprecedented step of invoking this authority to prevent the closure of power plants that utilities and grid operators have determined were too costly to keep open and weren’t needed to maintain grid reliability. He also appears to be using it indefinitely.
The agency has issued three continuous 90-day orders to force a coal plant in Michigan and an oil- and fossil-gas-fired plant in Pennsylvania to keep running. It is expected to soon extend the forced operations of a coal plant in Colorado and two coal plants in Indiana.
Meanwhile, the costs of restarting operations at plants on the verge of being shut down are mounting — and will be borne by customers who are already struggling with rising utility bills The Sierra Club estimates that DOE’s orders have added up to $269 million as of Tuesday afternoon. DOE’s orders have been silent on how to assign those costs, leading state utility regulators and grid operators to dispute how to apportion them out to utility customers across their regions.
Washington state operates under a set of regulatory and energy market structures that complicate the matter of forcing TransAlta to generate power and foist those costs on utility customers. The Centralia facility is a “merchant” plant, meaning it cannot recover the cost of fuel and maintenance from captive utility customers, and must sign contracts with utilities or other energy buyers to earn enough money to stay open.
For the past decade, Washington state and TransAlta have planned to convert the Centralia plant to run on fossil gas. Kousinioris said last month that this plan remains in place. TransAlta has also secured an agreement to sell future gas-fired energy to utility Puget Sound Energy, he said. Meanwhile, the company has no contracted customers for the plant’s coal-fired power, making it unclear how it would be compensated if forced to generate that power.
Critics accuse the DOE of twisting the law and fabricating grid emergencies to serve the Trump administration’s pro-coal agenda. State attorneys general and environmental groups have brought legal challenges against each of DOE’s must-run orders. The first of these challenges, to DOE’s order for the J.H. Campbell coal plant in Michigan, now awaits a hearing in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit.
In a Tuesday email, a DOE spokesperson did not address Canary Media’s questions regarding the critiques raised by these legal challenges, stating that such questions could be answered by reading the agency’s orders. “The Trump Administration is committed to preventing the premature retirement of baseload power plants and building as much reliable, dispatchable generation as possible to achieve energy dominance,” the spokesperson said.
The DOE has not responded to a clarification request from environmental groups on how the agency plans to use its Section 202(c) authority as the language of the law intends. That includes ensuring it forces the Centralia plant to operate “only as necessary to address a ‘loss of power to homes, businesses, and facilities critical to the national defense,’” as DOE’s order states it will do.
DOE has relied on broad and unsubstantiated claims of the risk of longer-term grid supply shortfalls to justify its emergency must-run orders, in Washington state and beyond. But the underlying law that the DOE is using doesn’t allow that, Kelly said.
“The core point here is that 202(c) is intended for real emergency situations, like an act of war, which is specified in the statute, or extreme weather situations that require specific responses,” he said. “Never before this administration has it been used as some sort of long-term planning tool.”
The legal challenges against DOE make this point clear, he said. “We hope we’ll see strong decisions that show how 202(c) is meant to be used and overturn these unlawful orders.”
Last year, Southern California’s air regulators rejected landmark rules that would have encouraged the switch from polluting gas heaters to electric heat pumps in the smoggiest region in the country. Now, environmental and public health advocates are pressing state and local officials to investigate whether opposition in the run-up to the decision was largely faked.
Members of the regulatory board voted 7–5 against the proposed rules in June, after receiving more than 20,000 public comments opposing them. It was “an unusually high number,” said Rainbow Yeung, spokesperson for the South Coast Air Quality Management District, which regulates the air quality for more than 17 million residents across Los Angeles, Orange, Riverside, and San Bernardino counties.
A Los Angeles Times investigation revealed that an advocacy software firm called CiviClick had been hired by a public affairs consultant with industry ties to deliver the large volume of emails — and raised questions about their legitimacy. The deluge “almost certainly” influenced the board’s decision, the L.A. Times reported, adding that most agenda items seen by the agency receive comments numbering in the single digits.
“It is … both shocking and concerning to learn that an agency responsible for regulating the air quality for nearly half of California’s population could have had the integrity of their public process compromised by comments made without people’s consent,” Gracyna Mohabir, clean air and energy regulatory advocate at the nonprofit California Environmental Voters, said during a February press conference with reporters.
Advocates are asking California Attorney General Rob Bonta and Los Angeles District Attorney Nathan Hochman to investigate whether CiviClick and others committed fraud to prevent the clean air rules from passing. As of Friday, no formal investigation had yet been launched. In the meantime, the SCAQMD itself has attempted to verify opposition letters, but those efforts have been inconclusive so far.
The agency’s rules would have ramped down the sale of new gas heaters but not banned them. The proposals would have encouraged manufacturers to gradually increase sales of superefficient electric heat pumps and heat-pump water heaters until they represented 30% of heater sales by 2027 and 90% by 2036. These manufacturers would have also paid a partial mitigation fee of $50 to $500 per gas appliance sold — and likely passed that fee on to customers who still opted for gas.
Still, the rules would have made an enormous difference for Southern Californians. By slashing emissions of smog-forming nitrogen oxides by 6 tons per day by 2060, the agency estimated, the regulations would have saved $25 billion in health costs from 2027 to 2053 — and about 2,500 lives.
Last June after their decision, regulators kicked the proposals back to a subgroup committee for further discussion. They have not announced a timeline to revisit the rules.
In the months leading up to the air district’s vote, the utility Southern California Gas Co., or SoCalGas, and allied groups spread misleading information about the rules, and encouraged mayors and other public officials to send letters, testify, and pass local resolutions railing against the measures.
Now, it’s clear that a key figure rallying opposition was Matt Klink, a public affairs consultant who ran a targeted campaign that resulted in the avalanche of comments now under scrutiny. Klink is a partner at California Strategies, one of the state’s most powerful lobbying firms, whose clients include Sempra, the parent company of SoCalGas.
Klink contracted with CiviClick, which has billed itself as “the first and best AI-powered grassroots advocacy platform,” to generate opposition comments. The platform “made the ultimate difference,” Klink said in a sponsored August article in Campaigns & Elections magazine. He did not respond to Canary Media’s multiple requests for comment.
CiviClick “knew the local targets who would respond to the messaging that was constructed … [And the firm] said, ‘these are the results that we guarantee,’” Klink said in the article. “We did two separate rounds of outreach, and they met the targets in both rounds early. AQMD staff are not used to getting tens of thousands of emails so it made a massive difference in turning the tide.”
In North Carolina, CiviClick is separately facing scrutiny for its involvement in producing mass emails supporting a proposed gas pipeline. Two local county commissioners replied to what they thought were emails from their constituents, only to learn that those individuals hadn’t sent the messages and didn’t know what the commissioners were talking about, E&E News reported in 2025.
SCAQMD staff (not to be confused with the 13 voting board members) found elements of the submissions “disturbing,” as the agency’s executive officer Wayne Nastri put it. Among those discrepancies: an email thanking Nastri himself for his supposed opposition to one of the rules his agency had crafted.
The air district also received multiple messages from the same CiviClick email address — constituent@civiclick.com — made to look as if they were sent by different individuals.
Agency staff members reached out to 172 people whose names were on submitted comments, to verify they were aware of the submissions. But the response rate was low.
“We received five total responses, two of which confirmed they sent letters and three of which had no knowledge of the letters,” Yeung said in an email. “The limited number of confirmations did not allow us to draw a definitive conclusion regarding the authenticity of the entire batch.”
The agency is considering a “more aggressive” way to check the veracity of the comments, Nastri said at the air district board meeting in March. It’s also looking at longer-term fixes such as instituting a secure comment portal.
“This has a lot of attention from a lot of different parties,” Nastri told the board. “I’m sure that we will be working with many people as we continue to address this.”
The controversy highlights mounting fears that interest groups could wield generative AI tools to give the semblance of strong public sentiment where it doesn’t exist.
The L.A. Times reporting initially suggested that CiviClick used AI for the SCAQMD opposition campaign. The firm’s founder and CEO, Chazz Clevinger, has since denied employing such tools in this instance to both the L.A. Times and Canary Media, although he confirmed his company does offer clients AI capabilities to personalize messages.
Local officials elsewhere are facing fraudulent public comments that may or may not have been AI-generated.
In the Bay Area, for example, air regulators received emails opposing air-quality rules last year as a part of a campaign run by a firm that advertises its AI capability, Speak4. Ten individuals identified as having sent opposition comments said they never did so, the San Francisco Chronicle reported last Thursday.
Clean air advocates in Southern California are demanding an investigation in the SCAQMD case to uncover whether identity theft was committed.
“I’m highly skeptical that CiviClick did not use AI to generate the comments, and their denial only increases the importance of a formal investigation into the comments, how they were generated, and whether individuals signed on consented to be included,” said Dylan Plummer, Clean Heat Campaign adviser for the Sierra Club.
The results are important both for this particular case, advocates said, and for the inevitable battles over regulatory proposals to come.
“This really is about the precedent going forward,” said Chris Chavez, deputy policy director of the statewide Coalition for Clean Air. “We need to make sure that we’re taking steps not just to protect our clean air, but [to] protect our regulatory process … to make sure that we can respond to the threats in our communities.”
The Trump administration is pushing to revive the U.S. nuclear industry — but slow-moving talks with the developer of the nation’s flagship nuclear reactor have prompted officials to explore alternatives.
Last May, amid surging demand for more electricity, President Donald Trump issued a flurry of executive orders aimed at quadrupling how much nuclear energy the United States produces.
For all the hype around next-generation technologies, a key prong of the expansion rests on the large-scale reactors the U.S. knows how to build and operate. One order directed the Department of Energy to “facilitate 5 gigawatts” of upgrades that squeeze more electricity out of existing plants and to “have 10 new large reactors with complete designs under construction by 2030.” Two weeks ago, the DOE’s Office of Energy Dominance Financing — previously known as the Loan Programs Office — closed a record $25.6 billion deal with Southern Co. to fund 6 GW of upgrades.
Building those new reactors is proving trickier, even though the language of that executive order was clearly designed to benefit one specific reactor model.
In the early 2000s, Westinghouse Electric Co., the legendary Pennsylvania developer whose pressurized-water reactor technology makes up three-quarters of the global fleet, rolled out the AP1000 as the crown-jewel American reactor model for the 21st century. After years of delays and billions of dollars in cost overruns, the U.S. finally completed its first two — and, so far, only — AP1000s at Southern Co.’s Alvin W. Vogtle Electric Generating Plant in eastern Georgia in 2023 and 2024.
The Trump administration has also explicitly embraced the reactor with a separate announcement. Last October, the Department of Commerce brokered a framework for a deal with the Japanese government that would secure an $80 billion investment for building at least 10 new AP1000s, though the details have yet to be ironed out.
But now the Trump administration is actively considering at least two rivals to the AP1000 that would qualify under the executive order. The DOE has held talks in recent weeks with executives from GE Vernova Hitachi Nuclear Energy and South Korean diplomats representing the state-owned Korea Electric Power Corp. to discuss potential financing if either company decides to compete with Westinghouse to build new large reactors, according to nine industry and administration sources who talked to Canary Media on condition of anonymity because they weren’t authorized to speak publicly. Both companies have gigawatt-scale reactors already certified by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
The DOE declined to comment on the talks but said in a statement that the Office of Energy Dominance Financing “plays a pivotal role in deploying high impact capital, which meets the goals for more large-scale nuclear deployment.”
The agency said, “DOE is fully committed to unleashing America’s next nuclear renaissance, from reinvigorating domestic supply chains to delivering gigawatts of new reactors.”
The talks developed as the Trump administration struggles to reach a deal with Westinghouse’s majority owner, the private equity giant Brookfield Asset Management, the sources said. To the DOE, Westinghouse and Brookfield are moving too slowly. To the utilities that the developers would likely work with, the federal government’s generous financing options for new reactors still don’t include the one thing they want most: cost-overrun insurance. Westinghouse was forced to file for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in 2017 after the costs of building the two reactors at Plant Vogtle ballooned.
“Westinghouse is not easy to negotiate with,” one industry source said. “But the bigger problem is the cost overruns.”
Brookfield did not respond to emailed questions. Westinghouse declined to comment on talks with the DOE but, in an emailed statement, called the AP1000 “the only construction-ready, gigawatt-scale, advanced modular reactor that is fully licensed and operating in the U.S.”
The company said, “Westinghouse and its experienced U.S. supply chain partners are ready now to deliver a fleet of AP1000 plants.”
A spokesperson also sent a 24-slide report, released this week and conducted by the consultancy PwC on behalf of the firm, which found that building 10 new AP1000s would give the U.S. economy a nearly $93 billion boost. It’s difficult to compare the price of the AP1000 with the cost of its two U.S.-certified rivals. GE Hitachi — as the U.S.-Japanese joint venture is referred to — has not built its ABWR in 20 years. Meanwhile, South Korea provided state-backed loans that may not be available in the U.S. in its most recent international bids for its competitor, the APR-1400. But research from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology has separately found that the AP1000’s settled design and supply chains make it the cheapest option to build next in the U.S., compared with the small modular reactors on offer. The AP1000, and designs like it, have made up 12 of the 14 new units connected to the grid worldwide since 2023.
GE Hitachi expressed little interest in bringing back its ABWR, three of those sources said. The company did not respond to emailed questions.
The developer built four of the 1,300-megawatt powerhouses in Japan between 1996 and 2006. It nearly finished another two at Taiwan’s canceled fourth nuclear station. The company’s partner in the early 2000s, the Japanese giant Toshiba, also laid plans for the first U.S. ABWR 90 miles southwest of Houston, before abandoning the proposal in 2018. The intellectual property for the ABWR is shared between GE, Hitachi, and Toshiba.
But bringing back the ABWR could pull resources away from GE Hitachi’s big gamble on small modular reactors. The company is currently developing its first two 300-megawatt BWRX-300 reactors: one in Tennessee, with $400 million in backing from the Trump administration, and the other in Ontario, Canada.
South Korea, meanwhile, has long wanted to work with the U.S. on nuclear power, but a legal barrier has stood in the way.
In 2022, Westinghouse accused South Korea’s APR-1400, a 1,400-megawatt pressurized-water reactor, of relying on patented technology derived from the American company’s subsidiary without permission. The threat of a lawsuit kept any project plans at bay even though the Nuclear Regulatory Commission certified the APR-1400 for use in the U.S. in 2019.
The legal dispute has since simmered down. In January 2025, Westinghouse announced a global settlement of the intellectual property dispute with South Korean state nuclear company Korea Electric Power Corp., or Kepco, which owns the developer Korea Hydro & Nuclear Power. The terms of the agreement aren’t public, but the business press in Seoul has reported that the deal was hugely unpopular in South Korea and prohibits the country from bidding on nuclear power projects in North America and Europe. Last August, the Yonhap News Agency reported that Kepco was considering creating a joint venture with Westinghouse to work on projects.
Three industry sources familiar with the settlement confirmed that the agreement bars Kepco from developing an APR-1400 in the U.S. While debate has raged in Seoul over the territorial boundaries drawn into the deal, it’s unclear whether the Trump administration is prepared to press Westinghouse to reopen discussions. Under the settlement, Kepco could partner with Westinghouse to build AP1000s in the U.S. But two sources with direct knowledge of the talks said high-ranking DOE officials met with top Korean diplomats last week about building an APR-1400 in the U.S.
Neither Kepco nor the South Korean Embassy in Washington, D.C., responded to requests for comment. But South Korea’s Industry Minister, Kim Jung-kwan, confirmed in a parliamentary session Monday that the government is in talks with the U.S. to invest in an American nuclear power project as part of the $350 billion deal Seoul brokered with the Trump administration to reduce tariffs.
“We are in serious discussions regarding nuclear power,” Kim said in response to a lawmaker’s question about potential Korean nuclear investments in the U.S., according to Reuters.
To Nick Touran, a veteran nuclear engineer who spent 15 years at Bill Gates’ next-generation reactor company, TerraPower, working with South Korea is “the best way to get big reactors done for cheap.” The East Asian nation emerged in recent years as the democratic world’s leading nuclear developer after Kepco completed work on the United Arab Emirates’ debut atomic power station, Barakah, relatively on time and on budget.
“They can deliver megaprojects, as they just demonstrated in the UAE,” said Touran, who now works as an independent industry consultant and runs the website What Is Nuclear. “For years I have said that if we could do anything in the U.S., we should just hire the Koreans to build a few APR-1400s and train the American construction managers and craft labor in their process.”
The U.S. and Korean nuclear industries have long been entwined.
In the 1980s, Combustion Engineering licensed its underlying technology to Kepco and Korea Hydro & Nuclear Power for the pressurized-water reactor that ultimately became the APR-1400. But the American company granted the license for use only in South Korea. When Kepco started work on the Barakah in Abu Dhabi, the company needed permission from the U.S. to transfer American atomic power technology. Westinghouse, which bought Combustion Engineering in 2000, also stepped in to demand licensing fees for any APR-1400s sold outside South Korea.
“We taught the Koreans how to do nuclear when we sold them Combustion Engineering technology. Korea maintained the knowledge, made it better, perfected it. Now, we want it back. So let’s pull ourselves out of the dark ages by bringing that Korean construction management, design expertise, and supply chain back,” Touran said. “Let’s forget about geopolitics — forget about Westinghouse’s cartel — and get the Koreans to come help America.”
Likewise, he said, the ABWR is a reliable choice.
The U.S. could ultimately provide at least some of the cost overrun insurance the industry is demanding. Last month, Sen. Jim Risch, an Idaho Republican, and Sen. Ruben Gallego, an Arizona Democrat, introduced a bill that would cover up to $3.6 billion in budget busters.
At this point, however, the U.S. has no large reactor projects underway, and industry and government efforts remain largely focused on small modular reactors and microreactors that have yet to be proven out. Dozens of next-generation reactor designs are winding their way through the Nuclear Regulatory Commission process, and 10 designs are currently undergoing testing in a DOE pilot program with a July 4 deadline for at least three projects to split atoms for the first time.
While Touran said that “competition is inherently good and American,” it’s also true that the divided efforts in the U.S. have kept costs high for domestic nuclear power plant construction. Zeroing in on the AP1000 “would help us learn the lesson of serialization faster by focusing on one,” he said.
Jigar Shah, the former head of the DOE’s Loan Programs Office during the Biden administration, agreed that the department needs to narrow its selection of reactors, not widen it.
“If the Trump administration is serious about making a lasting impact on nuclear, it needs to be winnowing down the list of companies that are racing to the finish line,” Shah said. “At some point, the Trump administration can’t say, ‘We’re The Cheesecake Factory, and we have 64 pages of menu items.’ At some point, you have to say, ‘We’re a tasting menu, and here’s what you have to choose from.’”
See more from Canary Media’s “Chart of the Week” column.
California and Texas are far ahead of the pack when it comes to grid batteries. But another state is seeing storage expand quickly as it looks to store more of its abundant, cheap solar power for later.
Arizona saw blistering growth in utility-scale battery capacity last year, more than doubling its fleet to a total of 4.7 gigawatts at the end of 2025, according to U.S. Energy Information Administration data analyzed by research firm Cleanview.
The two leading states each installed far more capacity last year than Arizona did, but neither of these more mature markets grew as quickly. California expanded its fleet by 29%, to 15.2 GW, while Texas’ grew by 69%, pushing it to just over 14 GW of total installed capacity.
Batteries continue to fall in price and are among the fastest ways to add capacity to the grid. At a time when demand for electricity is skyrocketing, threatening to push already elevated utility bills even higher, cost and speed are critical factors. The Republican budget bill passed last summer notably let batteries hang on to their generous tax incentives while sunsetting the same credits for solar and wind.
Still, the technology is relatively new to the grid — even if it’s just a supersize version of the batteries in your phone and computer. Less than a decade ago, hardly any batteries were plugged into the grid, but a combination of those falling costs, surging solar, clean energy targets, and tweaks to energy market designs have opened the floodgates in certain regions.
It makes sense that Arizona is now third on the battery leaderboard.
For one, it has lots of solar power. It’s fourth in the nation in utility-scale solar, after Texas, California, and Florida. Energy storage is most potent when used to soak up dirt-cheap, excess solar — something states like Arizona have in spades, especially on afternoons when power demand is low but the sun is shining.
Meanwhile, Arizona is staring down a bigger increase in electricity demand than “almost anywhere in the country,” writes Cleanview founder Michael Thomas. Arizona is not only a hot spot for the data center boom but also the site of a massive, energy-hungry chip-manufacturing hub being built by the Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co.
Put simply, Arizona needs to build a lot more energy capacity, fast — and batteries are a cheap and easy way to do it.
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