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  • There’s only one statewide ballot this year in Georgia — and it’s important.

    Early voting is underway in the primary election for two seats on the Georgia Public Service Commission, the powerful panel of regulators with final say over the rates and energy plans of the state’s largest electric utility, Georgia Power — a subsidiary of one of the largest utilities in the country. 

    This year’s PSC election comes with added scrutiny because it’s been nearly five years since the last one, and in that time Georgia Power bills have increased repeatedly with the current commission’s approval. It’s also the only statewide race on Georgia’s ballot this year.

    State utility commissioners across the country have a substantial impact on climate action because they oversee electric utilities and have final say over how those utilities generate energy — one of the major sources of greenhouse gas emissions. In states like Georgia where monopoly utilities dominate, the commissioners’ power is magnified.

    Elections for the Georgia Public Service Commission have been canceled for the last two cycles because of a voting rights lawsuit challenging the way the elections are conducted, meaning three commissioners have continued to serve and vote on key issues without facing voters as originally scheduled. Two of those commissioners, Republicans Tim Echols and Fitz Johnson, are on the ballot this year.

    Candidates for the commission have to live in designated districts. This election is for district two, covering a swath of East Georgia including Augusta and Savannah, and district three, covering the three metro Atlanta counties of Clayton, Dekalb and Fulton. But all Georgia voters elect the commissioners, meaning any registered voter in Georgia can vote for both seats on the ballot, regardless of where they live.

    While the incumbents running to keep their seats have touted their work on reliable energy, the new nuclear reactors at Plant Vogtle and affordable power bills, their opponents have been sharply critical of repeated rate hikes and a commission they argue doesn’t listen to the concerns of Georgians.

    The candidates below are on the ballot in the June 17 primary. The winners of that election and any runoffs will then compete in the general election on November 4.

    District 2

    Democrats:

    Alicia Johnson is running unopposed for the Democratic nomination in district two, meaning she will face the winner of the Republican primary in November. With a background in advocacy, human services and healthcare, Johnson said her chief concern is high costs for Georgians living in poverty.

    “Seniors, children, single moms and working families in our communities all across 159 counties in Georgia are having to make tough decisions like whether or not they buy prescriptions or pay their electricity bills,” she said, criticizing the repeated rate hikes and Georgia Power profits approved by the current commission.

    Johnson said the commission should push the utility to invest more in clean energy, including what’s known as distributed energy – rooftop solar panels and community solar – as well as battery storage and microgrids to power new industries like data centers.

    She also weighed in on a proposal before the commission to temporarily freeze base power rates, which she called “a strategic move because of the special election.”

    “We’re already paying some of the highest energy bills in the country,” Johnson said. “And so I see this as too little too late. We needed this kind of protection before.”

    Republicans:

    District two incumbent Tim Echols is perhaps the most prominent current member of the commission, known for his radio show and public appearances across the state as well as his work at the PSC. Echols cited that as one reason voters should choose him.

    “Folks have come to know me as that accessible commissioner, the commissioner doing all these educational events,” he said. “So if you want me to continue with my enthusiasm and all that I put into this job in creating this great environment that we have in Georgia that attracts so much business, that’s why you should keep me.”

    He also cited his work to advance solar energy in Georgia and ensure the new nuclear reactors at Plant Vogtle were completed. The state has made enormous strides on utility-scale solar energy, ranking seventh in the nation, but lags behind on battery storage, something Echols wants to change. He also said the state needs more nuclear energy, to replace closing fossil fuel plants.

    Echols also touted the proposed rate freeze, which he called a “win for consumers,” though the commission has not actually adopted it yet. But he had no doubt it would.

    “It will pass,” Echols said. “I can guarantee you the five Republicans will freeze rates. That is going to happen.”

    Republican challenger Lee Muns took aim at Echols’s high profile in an interview with WABE.

    “Well-known is a double edged sword,” he said. “Well-known means that you get judged based upon what you’ve done. And when people look at those things, what I’m hearing from a lot of them is the quality of service that they have gotten from my opponent is not what they were looking for.”

    With a background in power plant construction, Muns is a strong supporter of nuclear energy. But he’s also sharply critical of how the commission handled the new reactors at Plant Vogtle, a project that came in years behind schedule and far over its original budget. Commissioners should have done more to protect Georgia Power customers from those costs, he said.

    “I’m all about schedules, I’m about cost controls, I’m all about quality, I am all about safety,” Muns said. “And I want to bring all that expertise to the table.”

    Because nuclear energy takes time to build, Muns said he favors natural gas and solar energy in the short term and supports phasing out coal because of the environmental risks.

    District 3

    Democrats:

    Former Environmental Protection Agency official Daniel Blackman has run for the commission before, losing a runoff for the district four seat in January 2021 — the last time a PSC race made it past the primary. 

    His switch to district three this time has prompted an eligibility challenge that’s played out in court even as early voting continues. At a hearing on Tuesday, a judge said Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger was correct to disqualify Blackman from the race. Blackman could still appeal, but as it stands now, votes for him won’t count. 

    While he said his chief concern is high energy bills, Blackman said he would also bring critical expertise from his years working for the EPA.

    “I think uniquely what is missing at the commission is a very strong and keen understanding of the energy industry,” he said. “But I’ve actually had to negotiate these deals.”

    Like other candidates, Blackman was critical of the proposed rate freeze, which he said he would like to see extended for a longer period of time. He also said that Georgia Power is currently at risk of “overcommitment” to fossil fuel resources like gas and coal and should focus instead on renewables, batteries and modernizing the grid. And he said he’d like to get the public involved in utility planning.

    “I’d like to work on making sure that we do community town halls around the state of Georgia to bring more ratepayers into the conversation to determine how these rates impact them on a daily basis,” Blackman said.

    As the founder of Georgia Center for Energy Solutions, Peter Hubbard has intervened in PSC proceedings since 2019 and said he’s now ready to bring that expertise to a seat on the commission. His focus, he said, is on lowering energy bills and pursuing different ways of meeting Georgia’s energy needs, including solar and batteries, programs that reduce demand, rooftop solar and sharing energy capacity with neighboring utilities.

    “The current commissioners accept that face value, the plan that’s provided to them by Georgia Power Company,” Hubbard said. “I have criticisms of those plans.”

    Hubbard said he’d prefer to be proactive as a commissioner, seeking out possible solutions and new programs, rather than reactive to the plans put forward by Georgia Power. He also said he’s frustrated by what he sees as a lack of response from the current commissioners to constituents’ concerns about affordability and climate change.

    “I see a lack of accountability among the folks at the Public Service Commission towards those residential electricity ratepayers or customers, those hardworking Georgians,” Hubbard said. “I want them to allow them to have better representation.”

    Former utility analyst Robert Jones said the commission is using outdated “rules and tools” in its oversight.

    “The commission has, in my opinion, been overly generous and favorable toward Georgia Power,” he said.

    The current model for planning and building power resources, which passes many costs on to the utility’s customers, is a holdover from a period of slower growth, Jones said. He thinks the utility should instead have to fund its growth on the capital marketplace like other businesses.

    “What the commission has been doing is really using ratepayers and small businesses as what I call interest-free subprime lenders to the utility company that is a monopoly-oriented business, profit-oriented business that’s generating excessive profits,” he said. “That’s just out of whack with the market reality of what a competitor would face.”

    Jones said he also has experience working with data centers, the main driver of the current increase in energy demand, as a former executive for Microsoft. And data centers, he said, want clean energy – which he called “inconsistent” with Georgia Power’s use of fossil fuels.

    Former state lawmaker and Atlanta City Council member Keisha Sean Waites declined to be interviewed for this story but answered questions via email. She said her previous experience in state and local government sets her apart because she knows “how to navigate government, write policy, and deliver results.”

    As a commissioner, Waites said she would push for renewable energy and stronger benchmarks for reducing Georgia Power’s reliance on coal and natural gas. She also supports a policy called performance-based regulation, which ties a utility’s profits to performance metrics so they “only profit when they meet the needs of their customers, not just when they build expensive infrastructure,” she wrote.

    “Georgians deserve a fighter at the table, someone who understands the impact rising utility bills have on everyday families,” Waites wrote. “I’m running to…bring transparency, fairness, and accountability to an agency that touches every household in this state.”

    Republicans: 

    District three incumbent Fitz Johnson declined to be interviewed for this story. He was appointed to fill a vacancy on the commission in 2021, and the subsequent election for the remainder of his predecessor’s term was called off due to the voting rights lawsuit in 2022.

    When he qualified for the race earlier this year, Johnson told WABE that the commission was “doing great work with the utilities across the state of Georgia” and called taking care of ratepayers his number one goal. He touted the new contract terms for large customers that the commission passed earlier this year as one example. Those terms are designed to protect ordinary residential and small business customers from the high costs of serving new data centers and other large power users, though some critics have questioned whether the provisions offer enough protection.

    In addition to serving on the Georgia PSC, Johnson chairs a committee on natural gas planning for the National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners.

    This story was originally published by Grist with the headline There’s only one statewide ballot this year in Georgia — and it’s important. on Jun 12, 2025.

    This post was originally published on Grist.

  • Coal miners are fighting Trump’s safety cuts — and winning

    When the Trump administration took the first steps toward shutting down two major programs aimed at protecting the nation’s miners, the grassroots response was immediate, and vehement.

    And, it turns out, successful. 

    In March, the administration moved to shutter over 30 field offices of the Mine Safety and Health Administration, or MSHA, throughout coal country. Weeks later, it proposed cutting 90 percent of the staff at the National Institute for Occupational Health. That would have killed its efforts to screen miners for black lung and treat that progressive, fatal disease, which is caused by chronic exposure to silica dust.

    Miners and their advocates swiftly demanded that President Donald Trump, who has never shied away from celebrating coal miners as “real people,” change course. The United Mine Workers of America, the Black Lung Association, and environmental groups like Appalachian Voices came together to protest the cuts and tell lawmakers to back their calls to undo them. Two miners sued the administration, arguing the government is not meeting its obligations to protect those who produce a resource Trump deemed a “critical mineral” in an April 8 executive order vowing to restore the coal industry.

    The administration seems to have heard them, at least in part. Late last month, MSHA offices were quietly removed from the list of government buildings slated for closure and sale. The administration also has reinstated hundreds of occupational health workers, including some of those in the Coal Worker Health Surveillance Program. 

    Bipartisan support for miner safety came from Virginia Democratic senators Tim Warner and Tim Kaine and West Virginia Republican Shelly Moore Capito. Capito did not respond to a request for comment, but in a letter she sent to Trump in April the lawmaker expressed concern that eliminating NIOSH would hurt her state. She also said it would cost taxpayer dollars, by forcing the expensive decommissioning of specialized research labs where NIOSH scientists studied the effects of silica, coal dust, and mold on the human respiratory system.

    “As the President recognizes the importance of coal, we must also recognize the health of our miners,” Capito wrote in the letter, dated April 22. “I encourage you to bring back the NIOSH coal programs and researchers that will help ensure the President’s vision to unleash American energy can be done safely.”

    Erin Bates, director of communications for United Mine Workers of America, credited Capito for her role in reversing the field office closures. She said the union’s president, Cecil Roberts, met with Robert Kennedy, the secretary of health and human services, to lobby for saving NIOSH. The union has longstanding relationships with Democrats over worker safety issues, Bates said, but also has maintained good relationships with Republicans, given that much of coal country leans that way.

    Democrats have pushed the administration on some of the remaining cuts to MSHA. During a House hearing on Thursday, Representative Bobby Scott urged Labor Secretary Lori Chavez-DeRemer to hire more people. Scott drew attention to the revocation of job offers for dozens of mine inspectors. They will be urgently needed as the nation’s demand for critical minerals increases in the years ahead, Scott said.

    “We must invest in MSHA’s pipeline of talent so that qualified inspectors will be there to ensure safety in these dangerous jobs,” Scott, a Democrat from Virginia, said. “We know that the process takes years.”

    Miners and their advocates applauded the victories, but said there is still much work to do. 

    “I feel like we’ve won some,” said Vonda Robinson, vice president of the Black Lung Association. “But I don’t think that we’ve got enough yet.”

    Robinson remains concerned about the fate of the so-called silica rule, which tightens the acceptable level of exposure to that toxin. The rule, for the first time, brings the standard in line with what workers in other sectors have worked with for decades. But the rule has been placed in limbo since the cuts to NIOSH were announced, effectively eliminating the possibility of enforcement. Even with some job restorations, staffing shortages at the agency also make it difficult for various government departments to work together to safeguard worker health, Bates said.

    “We’re in a major push to prevent an operations lag while most of the workers are out,” she said.

    The president’s proposed federal budget also cuts funding from the Mine Safety Health Administration by 10 percent, down to $348.2 million from $387.8 million. “That is going to affect the offices that are still open and the inspectors that are working there,” Bates said. About $14 million of these cuts come from Mine Safety and Health Enforcement, and the agency would lose 47 salaried positions.

    In a statement, the Department of Health and Human Services told Grist it remains committed to protecting the health and safety of coal miners. The Labor Department did not respond to requests for comment.

    For now, miners and their advocates remain focused on determining just how many federal workers have been reinstated, whether any field offices remain closed, and securing further guarantees that the government will not step back from its critical safety work. 

    “Our push is trying to get answers now and no more waiting and worrying,” Bates said. 

    This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Coal miners are fighting Trump’s safety cuts — and winning on Jun 11, 2025.

    This post was originally published on Grist.

  • Data centers are building their own gas power plants in Texas

    Abigail Lindsey worries the days of peace and quiet might be nearing an end at the rural, wooded property where she lives with her son. On the old ranch across the street, developers want to build an expansive complex of supercomputers for artificial intelligence, plus a large, private power plant to run it.

    The plant would be big enough to power a major city, with 1,200 megawatts of planned generation capacity fueled by West Texas shale gas. It will only supply the new data center, and possibly other large data centers recently proposed down the road. 

    “It just sucks,” Lindsey said, sitting on her deck in the shade of tall oak trees outside the city of New Braunfels. “They’ve come in and will completely destroy our way of life: dark skies, quiet and peaceful.”

    The project is one of many others like it proposed in Texas, where a frantic race to boot up energy-hungry data centers has led many developers to plan their own gas-fired power plants rather than wait for connection to the state’s public grid. Egged on by supportive government policies, this build out promises to lock in strong gas demand for a generation to come. 

    The data center and power plant planned across from Lindsey’s home is a partnership between an AI startup called CloudBurst and the natural gas pipeline giant Energy Transfer. It was Energy Transfer’s first-ever contract to supply gas for a data center, but not likely its last. In a press release, the company said it was “in discussions with a number of data center developers and expects this to be the first of many agreements.”

    Previously, conventional wisdom assumed that this new generation of digital infrastructure would be powered by emissions-free energy sources like wind, solar, and battery power, which have lately seen explosive growth. So far, that vision isn’t panning out as desires to build quickly overcome concerns about sustainability.

    “There is such a shortage of data center capacity and power,” said Kent Draper, chief commercial officer at Australian data center developer IREN, which has projects in West Texas. “Even the large hyperscalers are willing to turn a blind eye to their renewable goals for some period of time in order to get access.”

    The Hays Energy Project is a 990 MW gas-fired power plant near San Marcos, Texas. Dylan Baddour / Inside Climate News

    IREN prioritizes renewable energy for its data centers—giant warehouses full of advanced computers and high-powered cooling systems that can be configured to produce crypto currency or generate artificial intelligence. In Texas, that’s only possible because the company began work here years ago, early enough to secure a timely connection to the state’s grid, Draper said. 

    There were more than 2,000 active generation interconnection requests as of April 30, totaling 411,600 MW of capacity, according to grid operator ERCOT. A bill awaiting signature on Gov. Greg Abbott’s desk, S.B. 6, looks to filter out unserious large-load projects bloating the queue by imposing a $100,000 fee for interconnection studies. 

    Wind and solar farms require vast acreage and generate energy intermittently, so they work best as part of a diversified electrical grid that collectively provides power day and night. But as the AI gold rush gathered momentum, a surge of new project proposals has created yearslong wait times to connect to the grid, prompting many developers to bypass it and build their own power supply. 

    Operating alone, a wind or solar farm can’t run a data center. Battery technologies still can’t store such large amounts of energy for the length of time required to provide steady, uninterrupted power for 24 hours per day as data centers require. Small nuclear reactors have been touted as a means to meet data center demand, but the first new units remain a decade from commercial deployment, while the AI boom is here today. 

    Now, Draper said, gas companies approach IREN all the time offering to quickly provide additional power generation. 

    Gas provides almost half of all power generation capacity in Texas, far more than any other source. But the amount of gas power in Texas has remained flat for 20 years, while wind and solar have grown sharply, according to records from the U.S. Energy Information Administration. Facing a tidal wave of proposed AI projects, state lawmakers have taken steps to try to slow the expansion of renewable energy and position gas as the predominant supply for a new era of demand.

    This build-out promises strong demand and high gas prices for a generation to come, a boon to Texas’ fossil fuel industry, the largest in the nation. It also means more air pollution and emissions of planet-warming greenhouse gases, even as the world continues to barrel past temperature records. 

    Texas, with 9 percent of the U.S. population, accounted for about 15 percent of current gas-powered generation capacity in the country but 26 percent of planned future generation at the end of 2024, according to data from Global Energy Monitor. Both the current and planned shares are far more than any other state. 

    GEM identified 42 new gas turbine projects under construction, in development or announced in Texas before the start of this year. None of those projects are sited at data centers. However, other projects announced since then, like CloudBurst and Energy Transfer outside New Braunfels, will include dedicated gas power plants on site at data centers. 

    For gas companies, the boom in artificial intelligence has quickly become an unexpected gold mine. U.S. gas production has risen steadily over 20 years since the fracking boom began, but gas prices have tumbled since 2024, dragged down by surging supply and weak demand. 

    “The sudden emergence of data center demand further brightens the outlook for the renaissance in gas pricing,” said a 2025 oil and gas outlook report by East Daley Analytics, a Colorado-based energy intelligence firm. “The obvious benefit to producers is increased drilling opportunities.”

    It forecast up to a 20 percent increase in U.S. gas production by 2030, driven primarily by a growing gas export sector on the Gulf Coast. Several large export projects will finish construction in coming years with demand for up to 12 billion cubic feet of gas per day, the report said, while new power generation for data centers would account for 7 billion cubic feet per day of additional demand. That means profits for power providers, but also higher costs for consumers. 

    Natural gas, a mixture primarily composed of methane, burns much cleaner than coal but still creates air pollution, including soot, some hazardous chemicals, and greenhouse gases. Unburned methane released into the atmosphere has more than 80 times the near-term warming effect of carbon dioxide, leading some studies to conclude that ubiquitous leaks in gas supply infrastructure make it as impactful as coal to the global climate.

    The site of a planned data center and power plant outside New Braunfels by CloudBurst and Energy Transfer. Credit Dylan Baddour / Inside Climate News

    It’s a power source that’s heralded for its ability to get online fast, said Ed Hirs, an energy economics lecturer at the University of Houston. But the yearslong wait times for turbines have quickly become the industry’s largest constraint in an otherwise positive outlook. 

    “If you’re looking at a five-year lead time, that’s not going to help Alexa or Siri today,” Hirs said. 

    The reliance on gas power for data centers is a departure from previous thought, said Larry Fink, founder of global investment firm BlackRock, speaking to a crowd of industry executives at an oil and gas conference in Houston in March. 

    About four years ago, if someone said they were building a data center, they said it must be powered by renewables, he recounted. Two years ago, it was a preference.

     “Today?” Fink said. “They care about power.” 

    Gas plants for data centers 

    Since the start of this year, developers have announced a flurry of gas power deals for data centers. In the small city of Abilene, the builders of Stargate, one of the world’s largest data center projects, applied for permits in January to build 360 MW of gas power generation, authorized to emit 1.6 million tons of greenhouse gases and 14 tons of hazardous air pollutants per year. Later, the company announced the acquisition of an additional 4,500 MW of gas power generation capacity. 

    Also in January, a startup called Sailfish announced ambitious plans for a 2,600-acre, 5,000 MW cluster of data centers in the tiny North Texas town of Tolar, population 940.

    “Traditional grid interconnections simply can’t keep pace with hyperscalers’ power demands, especially as AI accelerates energy requirements,” Sailfish founder Ryan Hughes told the website Data Center Dynamics at the time. “Our on-site natural gas power islands will let customers scale quickly.”

    CloudBurst and Energy Transfer announced their data center and power plant outside New Braunfels in February, and another company partnership also announced plans for a 250 MW gas plant and data center near Odessa in West Texas. In May, a developer called Tract announced a 1,500-acre, 2,000 MW data center campus with some on-site generation and some purchased gas power near the small Central Texas town of Lockhart. 

    Not all new data centers need gas plants. A 120 MW South Texas data center project announced in April would use entirely wind power, while an enormous, 5,000 MW megaproject outside Laredo announced in March hopes to eventually run entirely on private wind, solar, and hydrogen power (though it will use gas at first). Another collection of six data centers planned in North Texas hopes to draw 1,400 MW from the grid. 

    Amarillo business owners and community leaders tour the Edge Data Center at Region 16 Education Service Center on March 19. Angelina Marie / The Texas Tribune

    Altogether, Texas’ grid operator predicts statewide power demand will nearly double within five years, driven largely by data centers for artificial intelligence. It mirrors a similar situation unfolding across the country, according to analysis by S&P Global. 

    “There is huge concern about the carbon footprint of this stuff,” said Dan Stanzione, executive director of the Texas Advanced Computing Center at the University of Texas at Austin. “If we could decarbonize the power grid, then there is no carbon footprint for this.”

    However, despite massive recent expansions of renewable power generation, the boom in artificial intelligence appears to be moving the country farther from, not closer to, its decarbonization goals. 

    Restrictions on renewable energy

    Looking forward to a build out of power supply, state lawmakers have proposed or passed new rules to support deployment of more gas generation and slow the surging expansion of wind and solar power projects. Supporters of these bills say they aim to utilize Texas’ position as the nation’s top gas producer. 

    Some energy experts say the rules proposed throughout the legislative session could dismantle the state’s leadership in renewables as well as the state’s ability to provide cheap and reliable power. 

    “It absolutely would [slow] if not completely stop renewable energy,” said Doug Lewin, a Texas energy consultant, about one of the proposed rules in March. “That would really be extremely harmful to the Texas economy.”

    While the bills deemed as “industry killers” for renewables missed key deadlines, failing to reach Abbott’s desk, they illustrate some lawmakers’ aspirations for the state’s energy industry.

    One failed bill, S.B. 388, would have required every watt of new solar brought online to be accompanied by a watt of new gas. Another set of twin bills, H.B. 3356 and S.B. 715, would have forced existing wind and solar companies to buy fossil-fuel based power or connect to a battery storage resource to cover the hours the energy plants are not operating. 

    When the legislature last met in 2023, it created a $5 billion public “energy fund” to finance new gas plants but not wind or solar farms. It also created a new tax abatement program that excluded wind and solar. This year’s budget added another $5 billion to double the fund.

    The Lower Colorado River Authority is currently completing construction on a 190 MW gas-fired peaker plant near the town of Maxwell in Caldwell County. Dylan Baddour / Inside Climate News

    Among the lawmakers leading the effort to scale back the state’s deployment of renewables is state Sen. Lois Kolkhorst, a Republican from Brenham. One bill she co-sponsored, S.B. 819, aimed to create new siting rules for utility-scale renewable projects and would have required them to get permits from the Public Utility Commission that no other energy source — coal, gas, or nuclear — needs. “It’s just something that is clearly meant to kneecap an industry,” Lewin said about the bill, which failed to pass. 

    Kolkhorst said the bill sought to balance the state’s need for power while respecting landowners across the state. 

    Former state Rep. John Davis, now a board member at Conservative Texans for Energy Innovation, said the session shows how renewables have become a red meat issue.

    More than 20 years ago, Davis and Kolkhorst worked together in the Capitol as Texas deregulated its energy market, which encouraged renewables to enter the grid’s mix, he said. Now Davis herds sheep and goats on his family’s West Texas ranch, where seven wind turbines provide roughly 40 percent of their income. 

    He never could have dreamed how significant renewable energy would become for the state grid, he said. That’s why he’s disappointed with the direction the legislature is headed with renewables. 

    “I can’t think of anything more conservative, as a conservative, than wind and solar,” Davis said. “These are things God gave us — use them and harness them.”

    This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Data centers are building their own gas power plants in Texas on Jun 8, 2025.

    This post was originally published on Grist.

  • Trump’s Budget Bill Is Going to Spike Energy Costs for Households Across the US

    Energy policy analysts are in broad agreement about one consequence of major legislation that Republicans are currently pushing through Congress: It will raise energy prices for the average American household by hundreds of dollars, once all is said and done. That’s because the legislation, which President Donald Trump has dubbed the One Big, Beautiful Bill, will repeal the vast majority of…

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    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • Gulf Coast Communities Take On Insurers Backing Fossil Fuel Facilities

    Promising U.S. “energy dominance,” the Trump administration is moving to accelerate fossil fuel production. Key to this agenda is the approval of liquefied natural gas (LNG) export facilities across Gulf Coast communities that are disproportionately Black, Brown, and low-income, long treated as expendable “sacrifice zones” by the fossil fuel industry.

    Just recently, on May 23, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) reauthorized the massive CP2 LNG in Cameron Parish, Louisiana, which will be the biggest LNG export facility in the U.S.

    Local organizers and climate groups have been fighting the expansion of these “methane export facilities” which they say will intensify climate chaos and environmental racism.

    The post Gulf Coast Communities Take On Insurers Backing Fossil Fuel Facilities appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

  • How Trump’s Big Beautiful Bill will raise household energy costs

    Energy policy analysts are in broad agreement about one consequence of major legislation that Republicans are currently pushing through Congress: It will raise energy prices for the average American household by hundreds of dollars, once all is said and done.

    That’s because the legislation, which President Donald Trump has dubbed the Big Beautiful Bill, will repeal the vast majority of clean energy provisions contained in the Inflation Reduction Act, or IRA, which a Democrat-controlled Congress passed in 2022. That earlier law provided a wide array of financial incentives for the deployment of electricity sources like solar, wind, battery storage, and nuclear power, as well as support for consumers looking to buy zero- and low-emissions products like electric vehicles. Choking off support for those measures not only hobbles U.S. efforts to fight climate change — the IRA, if left intact, could single-handedly reduce the country’s carbon emissions by 40 percent — but it also means there are fewer new sources of energy for a country that has started to need more and more of it. And reduced supply coupled with increased demand means higher prices.

    That’s the virtually unanimous conclusion of the academics and policy experts who have been trying to understand the likely effects of the rollback for the past few months, though each group of experts used different assumptions about the full extent of IRA repeal, given that the legislation is still currently being revised by the Senate. Part of the reason for this unanimity is that, once constructed, many newer energy sources like wind and solar don’t have substantial operating costs, compared to traditional power plants that must be continuously supplied with fuel.

    “Clean electricity has zero generation cost,” said Robbie Orvis, a senior director for modeling and analysis at Energy Innovation, a nonpartisan think tank. “One of the dynamics is that less clean electricity gets built, and that makes power generation more expensive, because we’re relying more frequently on fossil fuels with higher generation costs.”

    Orvis’ group calculated that those higher power generation costs from using coal or natural gas, along with other price increases stemming from IRA repeal, would result in household energy costs rising by more than $33 billion annually by 2035, compared to a scenario in which the IRA were left intact. That works out to roughly $250 more per year per household. Other analysts came to similar conclusions: The Rhodium Group, an independent policy analysis firm, estimates that average household costs could be as much as $290 higher per year by the same date. Princeton University’s ZERO Lab projects that energy costs could grow even higher: Their estimates show that, in a decade, annual household prices will be $270 to $415 higher under the GOP plan.

    Energy Innovation’s analysis calculated the effects of repealing the IRA on energy bills and transportation costs across the nation. They found that, if the tax credits for clean energy are taken away, utilities will increasingly rely on natural gas and coal, which have higher generation costs. These costs would then be passed on to customers. Additionally, as electric utilities’ demand for natural gas increases, the cost of the fossil fuel in the market will also rise, further raising household energy bills.

    “Gas suppliers can’t respond immediately to large changes in the demand for gas,” said Orvis. “The change in gas demand is pretty large without the tax credits. So you’re really increasing the reliance on gas, and therefore, gas demand and gas prices.”

    On the transportation front, the legislation passed by the House of Representatives eliminates IRA tax credits for electric vehicles and undoes the nation’s latest tailpipe standards, which limit the amount of pollution that new vehicles are allowed to emit. The result is a greater reliance on gasoline than would happen under the status quo — and more demand for gasoline means higher prices at the pump, per Orvis’ modeling. 

    These price spikes — and the electricity spikes in particular — won’t be felt uniformly across the nation. One key factor is how utilities in a state are regulated. Many states have just one utility that both generates power and provides it to electricity customers. But in so-called deregulated markets such as Texas and Pennsylvania, electricity providers compete on an open market to sell their power.

    The rules around how utilities calculate and pass on the costs of generating electricity vary significantly between these two models. In regulated markets with just one provider, the cost of generating electricity and getting it to homes is averaged out and passed on to customers. But the competitive nature of deregulated markets means that customers can see wild fluctuations in price. During peak winter and summer, when demand for power is high, prices can be double or triple normal rates. As a result, customers in deregulated markets see more variation in their bills — because those bills closely track changes in the marginal cost of electricity. If those costs rise in a dramatic and systematic way because IRA repeal leads to fewer sources of energy, customers in deregulated markets will feel the full force of it. Customers in regulated markets like much of the Southeast, on the other hand, will be somewhat cushioned from the increase, because their costs reflect the average of all generation and transmission costs incurred by their utility.

    “That helps minimize the impact of repealing IRA tax credits — though it also runs the opposite way and helps reduce savings when market prices go down,” said Jesse Jenkins, an associate professor at Princeton University who led the modeling conducted by the ZERO Lab, in an email. 

    These rising costs will come on top of U.S. energy bills that are already ticking upward. Electricity prices have been steadily rising since 2020, and the federal Energy Information Administration recently forecasted that that trend is likely to continue through 2026. Prices have increased for a variety of reasons, including Russia’s invasion of Ukraine disrupting global oil and gas supply chains, extreme heat and other weather shocks, costly maintenance needed to protected the grid from wildfires, and the buildout of additional capacity to meet growing demand. U.S. electricity demand is beginning to rise for the first time in decades, thanks to the construction of new manufacturing facilities and data centers, which support operations like cloud computing and artificial intelligence, as well as the growing adoption of electric vehicles.

    Orvis said that the IRA has been helping meet that demand and maintain the country’s competitive advantage with China, one of the Trump administration’s stated goals. The so-called Big Beautiful Bill would undermine that progress by reducing the amount of energy available for new manufacturing and AI development — and making the electricity that’s left more expensive for everyone.

    “The ironic thing is that what’s in the bill, the net results of it will be completely contradictory to what the [Trump] administration’s stated policy priorities are and will cede a lot of the AI development and the manufacturing to China specifically,” said Orvis. “That’s the important macro context for everything that’s happening now — and some of the un-modelable implications in the long run.”

    This story was originally published by Grist with the headline How Trump’s Big Beautiful Bill will raise household energy costs on Jun 6, 2025.

    This content originally appeared on Grist and was authored by Naveena Sadasivam.

  • Trump officials open up millions of acres in Alaska to drilling and mining

    Millions of acres of Alaska wilderness will lose federal protections and be exposed to drilling and mining in the Trump administration’s latest move to prioritize energy production over the shielding of the U.S.’s open spaces.

    Doug Burgum, the interior secretary, said on Monday that the government would reverse an order issued by Joe Biden in December that banned drilling in the remote 23-million-acre National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska, or NPR-A, The New York Times reported.

    The former president’s executive order was part of a package of protections for large areas of Alaska, some elements of which the state was challenging in court when Biden left office in January.

    Burgum was speaking in Alaska on Monday, accompanied by Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lee Zeldin and Energy Secretary Chris Wright. He said the Biden administration had prioritized “obstruction over production” and Biden’s order was “undermining our ability to harness domestic resources at a time when American energy independence has never been more critical.”

    In a post to X, Wright said oil production was the “engine of economic growth” in Alaska, funding more than 90 percent of the state’s general revenue. “Unleashing American energy goes hand in hand with unleashing American prosperity,” he wrote.

    Donald Trump declared a “national energy emergency” on the first day of his second term of office in January, promising an avalanche of executive orders friendly to the fossil fuel industry and supporting his campaign message of “drill, baby, drill.”

    Environmental groups had long feared Alaska would be the president’s number one target given the state’s abundance of untapped oil and gas reserves, and immediately criticized the move to open up drilling in an area crucial to the survival of imperiled Arctic species.

    “The Trump administration’s move to roll back protections in the most ecologically important areas of the western Arctic threatens wildlife, local communities, and our climate, all to appease extractive industries,” Kristen Miller, executive director of the Alaska Wilderness League, said in a statement.

    “This is another outrageous attempt to sell off public lands to oil industry billionaires at the expense of one of the wildest places left in America.

    “These lands are home to caribou, migratory birds, and vital subsistence resources that Indigenous communities have relied on for generations. The public fought hard for these protections, and we won’t stay silent while they’re dismantled.”

    The NPR-A lies about 600 miles north of Anchorage and is bordered by the Chukchi Sea to the west and Beaufort Sea to the north. It is the largest single area of public land in the U.S., the Times reported.

    It was created at the beginning of the 20th century as an emergency fuel reserve for the military and expanded to full commercial development in 1976 by an act of Congress. Lawmakers, however, ordered that land conservation measures and wildlife protections should be given prominence.

    Trump’s efforts to turbocharge drilling in Alaska, however, have not been as popular as he would have liked. Despite a promise to “open up” the 19-million-acre Arctic national wildlife refuge, a proposed auction of leases in January — authorized by the previous Congress but a crucial plank of the incoming president’s energy strategy — did not attract any bidders.

    “There are some places too special and sacred to exploit with oil and gas drilling,” Laura Daniel-Davis, the then-acting deputy secretary of the interior department, told the Times at the time.

    This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Trump officials open up millions of acres in Alaska to drilling and mining on Jun 4, 2025.

    This post was originally published on Grist.

  • The Supreme Court just blew up a major environmental law

    The U.S. Supreme Court last week ruled in favor of a controversial Utah railway project that critics say erodes the National Environmental Policy Act, or NEPA, a bedrock of environmental law for the past half century.

    The case centered on a proposed 88-mile railway that would connect the oil fields of northeastern Utah to a national rail network that runs along the Colorado River and on to refineries on the Gulf Coast.

    The waxy crude oil is currently transported by truck over narrow mountain passes. Project proponents said shipping the fossil fuel by rail — on as many as 10 trains daily — would be quicker and revitalize the local economy by quadrupling the Uinta Basin’s oil production.

    In 2020, the Seven County Infrastructure Coalition applied to the U.S. Surface Transportation Board for approval of the railroad’s construction. Under NEPA, the board was required to conduct an Environmental Impact Statement, or EIS, to evaluate possible harms from the project and consider how they could be mitigated.

    Environmental groups and Eagle County, Colorado, opposed the railway project. They cited the potential for derailments and spills into the Colorado River, the drinking water supply for 40 million people. Opponents were also concerned about increased air pollution in the Uinta Basin, where oil fields emit high levels of methane, a potent planet-warming greenhouse gas, as well as volatile organic compounds, some of which have been linked to increased risks of cancer. 

    Gulf Coast communities would also be harmed by air pollution when the crude oil was refined, opponents argued. The increased oil production and associated emissions would also drive climate change and its disastrous global effects: hurricanes, floods, droughts, and extreme heat.

    The Center for Biological Diversity, among the groups that had sued the Surface Transportation Board, said in a prepared statement that the ruling “relieves federal agencies of the obligation to review all foreseeable environmental harms and grants them more leeway to decide what potential environmental harms to analyze, despite what communities may think is important. It tells agencies that they can ignore certain foreseeable impacts just because they are too remote in time or space.”

    In 2021, the board issued a 3,600-page EIS, which identified numerous “significant and adverse impacts that could occur as a result of the railroad line’s construction and operation — including disruptions to local wetlands, land use, and recreation,” according to court documents. 

    The board nonetheless approved the railroad construction, concluding that the project’s transportation and economic benefits outweighed its environmental impacts.

    Opponents, including EarthJustice and Utah Physicians for a Healthy Environment, petitioned the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia. They argued the board’s environmental review excluded impacts of the project on people living near the oil fields, as well as Gulf Coast residents. 

    The appellate court agreed. It ruled that the board’s EIS impermissibly limited the analysis of upstream and downstream projects.

    “The appeals court had ruled that the federal agency that approved the railway failed in its obligations to consider the regional consequences of massively increased oil extraction on the Uinta Basin, the increased air pollution for the communities in Texas and Louisiana where the oil would be refined, and the global climate consequences,” said Dr. Brian Moench, president of Utah Physicians for a Healthy Environment. 

    The Seven County Coalition and the railroad company then appealed to the Supreme Court.

    “The Supreme Court’s ruling will allow all these consequences to unfold without meaningful restraint,” Moench said. “This court has made a name for itself making rulings that mock science and common sense and fail to protect the common good. This unfortunate ruling fits that same pattern.”

    NEPA has been federal law since 1970. It doesn’t prescribe specific environmental decisions, but it does establish a process to ensure federal agencies follow proper procedure in permitting. It can be a laborious, time-consuming process, but requires an agency to be thorough in assessing potential environmental impacts while giving the public adequate opportunity to comment.

    NEPA doesn’t necessarily halt projects, but it can force project developers to pursue alternatives that protect environmentally sensitive areas and communities.

    In his first term, President Donald Trump rolled back some aspects of NEPA, including weakening requirements to consider cumulative impacts of a project and the effects of climate change. Shortly after taking office this year, Trump signaled he plans to further streamline NEPA to expedite its approval process, especially for energy projects.

    Justice Brett Kavanaugh, who was appointed by President Trump in his first term, wrote the opinion on behalf of four other members of the court. “NEPA has transformed from a modest procedural requirement into a blunt and haphazard tool employed by project opponents (who may not always be entirely motivated by concern for the environment) to try to stop or at least slow down new infrastructure and construction projects,” Kavanaugh wrote.

    Courts should “afford substantial deference and should not micromanage those agency choices so long as they fall within a broad zone of reasonableness,” Kavanaugh wrote. “NEPA does not allow courts, under the guise of judicial review of agency compliance with NEPA, to delay or block agency projects based on the environmental effects of other projects separate from the project at hand.”

    Thursday’s 8-0 decision excluded Justice Neil Gorsuch, who recused himself because of his close connection to billionaire Philip F. Anschutz, who would economically benefit from the project.

    In a concurring opinion, Justice Sonia Sotomayor differed with Kavanaugh on his rationale for the ruling, but agreed on the outcome. She wrote that NEPA didn’t require the board to consider the effects of oil drilling and refining because those activities were outside its authority. “Even a foreseeable environmental effect is outside of NEPA’s scope if the agency could not lawfully decide to modify or reject the proposed action on account of it.”

    Justices Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson joined Sotomayor in the concurrence.

    The coalition was represented by Jay Johnson of Venable LLP, who said the ruling “restores much-needed balance to the federal environmental review process.” 

    Keith Heaton, director of the Seven County Infrastructure Coalition, the project’s public partner, said the decision affirms the years of work and collaboration that have gone into making the Uinta Basin Railway a reality. “It represents a turning point for rural Utah — bringing safer, sustainable, more efficient transportation options and opening new doors for investment and economic stability.”

    Wendy Park, a senior attorney at the Center for Biological Diversity, said despite the court’s ruling, “we’ll keep fighting to make sure this railway is never built.”

    This story was originally published by Grist with the headline The Supreme Court just blew up a major environmental law on Jun 3, 2025.

    This post was originally published on Grist.

  • Prepayment meters scandal sees 40,000 people owed compensation from energy companies

    Martin Lewis’ Money Saving Expert (MSE) has raised urgent awareness about a significant financial relief opportunity available to many households across the UK. Specifically, it has revealed that approximately 40,000 energy customers may be eligible to receive compensation of up to £1,000 due to forced transitioning to prepayment meters.

    Prepayment meters scandal: another dire headline for energy companies

    This development follows Ofgem’s announcement that it will disburse a total of £5.6 million from eight energy companies, addressing the concerns regarding how vulnerable customers were treated in the energy market.

    The compensation structure entails various amounts based on individual circumstances; while the potential payout ranges from £40 to £1,000, it is noted that very few will actually receive the full amount.

    According to MSE, those entitled to the maximum compensation amount will be those who were switched to prepayment meters without just cause. This situation highlights the ongoing turmoil many face in managing energy costs, particularly amid a cost-of-living crisis that has given rise to numerous challenges for low-income households.

    Ofgem, the energy regulator, has launched an investigation into the practice of switching customers onto prepayment meters, particularly targeting those who fell behind on payments between January 1, 2022, and January 31, 2023.

    This review stems from widespread concerns about the detrimental impact forced installations of prepayment meters can have on vulnerable individuals, many of whom are struggling with rising bills. It is worth noting that energy firms affected by this renewed scrutiny have already paid out £55 million in combined financial support.

    ‘One case is one too many’

    Speaking on these developments, Tim Jarvis, Ofgem’s director-general of markets, emphasised the regulator’s commitment to rectify situations where prepayment meters customers were treated inadequately. He stated:

    While the number of cases where a prepayment meter was wrongfully installed is relatively low compared to the total number of PPM customers, one case is one too many.

    This sentiment underscores Ofgem’s drive to implement stricter rules to safeguard consumers, a response to the possible exploitation of the most vulnerable members of society.

    The recent enhancements in regulatory frameworks include higher protections for consumers, particularly households with young children and older residents. A newly introduced Involuntary Prepayment Meter Code of Practice aims to prevent such wrongful installations from occurring in the future.

    This regulatory overhaul, which began to take effect in November 2023, is a direct response to the continued outcry from advocacy groups and the public for better treatment of customers who find themselves in precarious financial positions.

    However, progress remains slow, as highlighted by previous reports indicating that only a fraction of those affected have received compensation thus far.

    Prepayment meters: the thin end of the chaotic wedge

    Back in April 2024, it was reported that just over 1,500 customers had been compensated for wrongful prepayment meters installations, contributing to the overall sense of frustration surrounding the efficiency of redress mechanisms employed by energy firms.

    Shocking as it may be, for a system designed to protect consumers, delays in compensation distribution not only undermine trust but also considerably exacerbate the financial strain faced by already vulnerable families.

    Meanwhile, energy companies like E.ON Next are also under scrutiny after revelations that they had failed to provide final bills and refunds to nearly 250,000 prepayment meter customers from early 2021 through late 2023.

    In November 2024, Ofgem mandated E.ON Next to pay £14.5 million in compensation, breaking down into various categories of financial support, including credit refunds and statutory compensation.

    As energy bills continue to pose an obstacle for many households, while energy companies profits’ soar, the ongoing investigations and regulatory reforms offer a glimmer of hope for the relentless struggle to ensure fair treatment.

    The need for systemic changes is painfully echoed in the experiences of service users who deserve security in their home energy supply—especially in a time of rising expenses.

    Featured image via the Canary

    By Steve Topple

    This post was originally published on Canary.

  • Solar apprenticeships give Virginia students a head start on clean energy

    When Mason Taylor was getting ready to graduate from high school in 2022, he thought he would have to take an entry-level technician job with a company in Tennessee.

    Taylor grew up in the town of Dryden in rural Lee County, in the westernmost sliver of Virginia between Kentucky and Tennessee. He had come to love the electrical courses he took in high school because there was always something new to learn, always a new way to challenge himself. 

    Driving to Tennessee for work would likely mean two hours commuting each day.

    Taylor, now 21, just wanted to work close to home. 

    A summer apprenticeship learning how to install solar arrays helped him get on-the-job training and opened up connections to local work.

    A regional partnership working to add solar panels to commercial buildings in the region aims to train young people as they go, developing workforce skills in anticipation of increasing demand for renewable energy-focused jobs in the heart of coal country, where skill sets and energy options are both changing. 

    Virginia ranks eighth in the nation for installed solar capacity, according to the Solar Energies Industry Association, but so far, major renewable energy projects have been clustered in the eastern and southern regions of the state. Increasing the popularity of solar power in the far southwestern corner of the state depends in part on the availability of trained workers like Taylor.

    A map of clean energy jobs in southwest Virginia
    Cardinal News

    Andy Hershberger, director of Virginia operations for Got Electric, said the electrical contractor firm has had an apprenticeship program nearly since the company’s founding. 

    The company, which has about 100 employees total, with 40 in Virginia and an office in Maryland, has worked with Staunton-based Secure Solar Futures, a commercial and public-sector solar developer, as far back as 2012. 

    More recently, the two companies began working to set up a training program that was more focused on solar. The catalyst was the former superintendent of Wise County schools, a school division that had signed up to put solar panels on its facilities. The superintendent saw the installation as an opportunity to get his students hands-on work on a renewable energy project.

    Approximately three dozen apprentices have signed up for the program since 2022, including about 13 who are currently involved, Hershberger said. They work on a variety of solar projects, including on rooftops, carports, and ground-mounted installations. 

    “We have been utilizing this program to train students coming out of high school and basically growing the workforce side of this thing, so we have the necessary personnel to build these solar projects long term,” Hershberger said.

    On top of hourly pay, apprentices get free equipment and a transportation subsidy, along with nine community college credits at Mountain Empire Community College, which provides classroom training before students step onto the job site. 

    “I mean, pretty much everything you need to know to go out and do any electrical job, you pretty much learned in that apprenticeship program,” Taylor said.

    He was in the first cohort of 10 students who installed solar panels on public schools in Lee and Wise counties in 2022. A grant from a regional economic development authority paid the students’ wages while they earned credit at Mountain Empire Community College, which serves residents of Dickenson, Lee, Scott, and Wise counties, plus the city of Norton.

    He got a job offer from Got Electric at the end of that summer. 

    This summer, Secure Solar Futures and Got Electric will join forces again to install more than 1,600 solar panels on the community college’s classroom buildings. The project was originally slated for 2024 but was delayed due in part to a separate project upgrading fire safety equipment in one of the buildings.

    The 777-kilowatt solar power system will be connected to the electric grid, and Mountain Empire will receive credit for the power it generates.

    Hershberger said he sees interest in solar growing.

    “I think there’s always been folks that have adopted renewable projects, different types of energy sources. There’s always the standard interest in trying to save money for facilities and campuses and things like that,” he said.

    Mountain Empire Community College offers solar training as a standalone career studies certificate or as part of its larger energy technology associate degree program.

    In southwestern Virginia, a solar installation project is more likely to consist of adding panels to homes and businesses rather than building the large, utility-scale ground-based facilities more commonly seen in the Southside region of Virginia, said Matt Rose, the college’s dean of industrial technology.

    Tony Smith, founder and CEO of Staunton-based Secure Solar Futures, speaks with media at an April event to celebrate Roanoke City Public Schools’ first phase of solar-array installation on six facilities.
    Lisa Rowan / Cardinal News

    On a larger project, a single worker might have a specialized role, performing the same task across a large number of panels. On a smaller project, a worker is more likely to be involved in more aspects of the job.

    “Our students need to have that comprehensive understanding and ability to be able to do it all,” he said.

    Last year, 10 students graduated Mountain Empire with the solar installer certification. Many students who earn the certification perform solar installation work as one part of a more comprehensive job, such as being an electrician.

    Rose said the college’s students typically start out making $17 or $18 an hour but can earn more as they become journeymen and master electricians. 

    Nationwide, the median salary for electricians is about $61,000. 

    In Lee County, population 22,000, the median household income is about $42,000. 

    The number of solar installers in southwest Virginia is unclear. The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics doesn’t collect data on employment by technology, so residential solar installation companies are labeled as electrical contractors, along with all other electrical businesses, according to the U.S. Department of Energy.

    Tony Smith, founder and CEO of Secure Solar Futures, measures the success of the company’s apprenticeship program person by person. At an April event to celebrate the completion of the first phase of solar panel installation for Roanoke schools, Smith asked about several of the students from the 2022 cohort from Lee and Wise counties by name. 

    Smith said it’s tough to replicate the apprenticeship program at various school divisions. Doing so requires the work of individual school systems and the regional community colleges, instead of being able to pick up the curriculum from one area and apply it at the next project site.

    And all the partners — Smith’s company, participating schools, and installation firms — face some uncertainty for each project. It’s challenging to pinpoint the timing of projects so that students have the time to participate during the summer months, he said.

    Solar training can give students a ‘head start on everybody’

    “The things I learned in the apprenticeship program I’m still doing day-to-day,” Anthony Hamilton, 21, said. He completed the eight-week apprenticeship in Lee and Wise counties in 2022 alongside Taylor. He didn’t think it would turn into a ful-time job. He doubted anyone really wanted to hire a kid just starting college. 

    He’s been with Got Electric ever since, working as an electrician primarily on commercial jobs. Hamilton’s solar experience has come in handy on recent installation projects at a poultry farm and at a YMCA facility.  

    Hamilton continued going to school at Mountain Empire and graduates this month with two associate degrees in energy technology and electrical. He’s also earned a handful of certificates in solar installation, air-conditioning and refrigeration, and electrical fabrication, among others. With the nine credits he earned in the summer apprenticeship, he “already had a head start on everybody in the program.” 

    It wasn’t an easy journey, though.

    He said he usually started his day around 6 a.m. and went to night classes after work that stretched until 9:30 p.m. Hamilton lives in Coeburn in Wise County, a 45-minute drive to the college campus. He’d get home late, then get up early and do it all over again. But his college was free through a local scholarship program that pays for up to three years of classes at Mountain Empire.

    He’d like to stay with Got Electric and start preparing to take his journeyman’s license, which requires at least four years of practical experience on top of vocational training, plus an exam. From there, he’s got designs on moving up in the company and eventually becoming a master electrician.

    On April 14, he was in the town of Abingdon, a few weeks into a three-month project installing a solar array at a large poultry farm that says it produces more than 650,000 eggs a day. The work so far entailed digging trenches and laying PVC pipe for the ground-mount solar system that will span one section of the farm’s expansive fields.

    Taylor uses similar skills at work each day. But his work site looks a lot different from Hamilton’s.

    It has taken Taylor some time to figure out how to stick close to home while working in his trade. He spent a year working with Got Electric immediately after finishing his summer apprenticeship, then left the company to work as an electrician in a local school system. He eventually returned to Got Electric for a few months, working at Virginia Tech putting solar on three buildings on campus in Blacksburg, three hours from home. 

    He discovered he didn’t like traveling for installation jobs that meant night after night in a motel room.

    “That was the only complaint I had with it, about being away from home,” he said. 

    Now he’s an electrician at a state prison in Big Stone Gap. He has the same shift every day, in the same place, and drives 10 minutes home from work at the end of the day. 

    Taylor has also taken additional classes at Mountain Empire and wants to go back this fall to finish his associate degrees in HVAC and electrical. He eventually wants to open his own business as an electrician working locally. He’d like to be able to do small solar installation jobs. Solar hasn’t really caught on in far southwest Virginia, he said — at least, not yet. 

    Rose, the dean at Mountain Empire, noted that once major solar projects are done, maintenance doesn’t require ongoing jobs, and most students who receive training in solar installation typically make it part of another job, such as being an electrician.

    “We’re starting to see a lot more homeowners interested in [solar] locally as a way to offset increasing energy costs, but overall most of it is just a component of the job because there’s not enough demand,” Rose said. 

    Rose predicts interest in solar will grow as more homeowners and business owners look for ways to offset rising electric bills.

    “As we all look at increasing energy costs, it’s going to make a lot more economic sense,” he said.

    Energy independence, he added, fits with the character of southwest Virginia.

    “We’ve always been resilient people,” Rose said. “We’ve always been adapt-and-overcome people, and what better way than to basically control a little bit of your own power?”

    This reporting is part of a collaboration between the Institute for Nonprofit News’ Rural News Network and Canary Media, South Dakota News Watch, Cardinal News, The Mendocino Voice, and The Maine Monitor. Support from Ascendium Education Group made the project possible.

    This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Solar apprenticeships give Virginia students a head start on clean energy on May 25, 2025.

    This post was originally published on Grist.

  • Construction Unions Grab Hold Of Clean Energy Jobs

    State and local governments have begun taking concrete steps towards a clean energy economy, and for now, even under Trump, green union jobs are increasing.

    Meanwhile, unions have partnered with climate activists to win legislation for more such jobs. Six states have passed “climate jobs” bills to expand renewable energy and raise labor standards for that construction. Four more have union coalitions advocating for such legislation.

    Will the green surge continue? And if it does, will workers reap the economic benefits—or get left behind?

    The 2022 Inflation Reduction Act opened the door for clean energy projects across the country. Many IRA tax credits were designed to encourage the use of high-wage union labor.

    The post Construction Unions Grab Hold Of Clean Energy Jobs appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.

  • A Fraction of What We Pay in Fossil Fuel Subsidies Could Fund a Just Transition

    The bad news on climate change is plentiful. For one, there is no sign of a decline in global carbon dioxide emissions and the Earth is getting hotter faster than ever before, despite constant pledges of government action. And now, of course, the second Trump administration is implementing policies that represent the biggest attack on nature, climate and people ever. Yet…

    Source

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • Solar grants held hostage in Pennsylvania legislature — as demand soars

    Charles Suppon has big plans for the Tunkhannock Area School District. 

    At any given time, the northeastern Pennsylvania district’s chief operating officer can rattle off statistics about fields in which its schools excel: arts, AP classes, and softball, as well as on-the-job training programs for future farmers, welders, and more. Goats and chickens roam the high school’s courtyards, where students also tend to koi fish; in the hallways just beyond, high schoolers tinker with tractors, build furniture to sell, and offer free tax services for the broader community.

    But Suppon speaks with vigor when he talks about the five-megawatt system he hopes to install across five solar arrays on the district’s buildings and surrounding property. The solar panels will heat the district’s pool and serve as the basis for new curricula and jobs training classes on the solar industry. For a rural district of around 2,000, Tunkhannock is punching above its weight class, he believes. 

    “We’re a smaller school district doing big things.” 

    Suppon’s district is in a bright red portion of Pennsylvania northwest of Scranton, narrowly outside one of the state’s more prolific natural gas regions. For him, solar is simply a pathway toward cost savings — just as natural gas, from which the district earns royalties off several leases, has been. Tunkhannock believes it could save upwards of $1 million a year by switching to solar, money that could be used for student initiatives. 

    “It was always a financial decision,” Suppon said. “We wanted to be able to offset our energy costs, produce our own energy and only pay distribution [fees] back to the grid.”

    There’s one catch: Tunkhannock’s plan to go solar is contingent upon winning more than $1 million in funding from the state’s Solar for Schools program. Currently in its inaugural year, Solar for Schools was born from a bill that faced an uphill battle in a legislature where environmental bills often die by attrition — a battle that required its creator, progressive Representative Elizabeth Fiedler , a Democrat representing Philadelphia, to reach across the aisle and help marry what are often competing interests in the state — labor, education, and climate. 

    But that money for Tunkhannock might not come through because of the stiff competition for the limited funds. While last year’s state budget gave the Solar for Schools program $25 million to disperse to school districts, the program received applications that add up to nearly four times that amount from schools and districts large and small, rural and urban, and conservative and liberal. 

    “I was pleased, but hardly surprised,” Fiedler said in an email to Capital & Main of the demand.

    The disparity between the grant program’s budget and the size of its application pool mirrors a broader reality within the state Legislature: Despite clear and growing demand for solar energy, the political will to meet it has yet to catch up. 

    A 2022 poll of more than 1,300 Pennsylvanians conducted by Vote Solar Action, an advocacy group urging pro-solar legislation at the state level, found that 65 percent of Pennsylvanians support large-scale solar farm development in the state. More than 80 percent said they support rooftop solar, while 73 percent support natural gas and 52 percent support coal. 

    “I [have] visited nearly every corner of the state, from Waynesburg to Bethlehem, and in every place I met folks who wanted to save money on electricity, create good local jobs, and preserve the beauty of their communities,” Fiedler said. 

    Yet the state lags far behind most others in solar development: Pennsylvania currently ranks 49th in the nation for its growth in solar, wind, and geothermal generation over the last decade, according to the nonprofit advocacy group PennEnvironment.

    It has fallen behind other major fossil-fuel producing states, like Texas, the country’s second-largest solar generator in 2023; California, where solar and wind together comprise close to half the state’s energy generation; and New Mexico, which Environment America, the national organization behind PennEnvironment, ranked 4th in the U.S. for renewable energy production in 2024. 

    Just 3 percent of Pennsylvanians now have solar panels on their roofs, Vote Solar Action’s poll found — though 31 percent said they’d be interested in installing them. 

    The lag could be attributed, in part, to interconnection delays by the regional grid operator PJM — though many of its neighbors in the same system, like Washington D.C., New Jersey, and North Carolina, have eclipsed Pennsylvania’s solar production. 

    Because of increased demands predicted by PJM, utility bills in Pennsylvania are slated to increase this summer. Fiedler sees solar production as an antidote to what could be an oncoming energy crisis in the state.

    “We must generate more electricity,” she said. “Nuclear, wind, geothermal, and gas power plants can all be part of the solution, but the fact is we need energy now, and solar is the fastest.” 

    But solar initiatives continue to hit gridlock in the halls of state power. 

    After making its way through the state House last summer, a bill that would have enabled community solar — a program that allows multiple residents to enroll in a shared solar array separate from their homes — died in the Republican-controlled Senate. The bill’s author, Representative Peter Schweyer, a Democrat who represents Lehigh, who introduced it as a way to make solar accessible for renters, apartment dwellers, and those who can’t afford solar panels by themselves, has had to reintroduce the bill and start over again this session.

    Governor Josh Shapiro’s attempt to pass an updated renewables target also failed to gain traction in the Legislature last session. Where a 2004 target required 0.5 percent of the state’s energy generation to come from solar, the new plan would have required the state to reach a 35 percent target by 2035 that included solar, wind, and nuclear energy generation. He has reintroduced it as part of a broader energy package dubbed the “Lightning Plan.” 

    In a divided legislature, the fate of both initiatives is tenuous. 

    As renewable energy faces sweeping attacks at the federal level under the direction of President Donald Trump, states are stepping up to hold the line. Whether Pennsylvania will prove itself to be a meaningful player in this fight remains an open question. 

    “Climate change has become politicized,” said David Masur, executive director of nonprofit advocacy group PennEnvironment. “Which then potentially can create more powerful special interests who are opposed to common sense policies and have a vested self-interest in the status quo, and politicians having sort of a knee-jerk reaction to oppose things [that] are probably good even for their very own constituents.” 

    Case in point: Solar for All, a federal grant program initiated by the Biden administration that awarded Pennsylvania $156 million for residential solar installations on low-income households, was designed to save residents $192 million over the next 20 years in energy costs while averting 43 million tons of planet-warming carbon dioxide emissions from entering the atmosphere, the equivalent of removing more than 9 million cars from the road for a year. 

    These funds quickly became a negotiating chip. During deliberations over the 2024 state budget, a line was inserted into an omnibus fiscal code bill that prevented the state from accessing the funds. Though the Solar for All program was just one of several dozen federal environmental grants Pennsylvania won under Biden-era initiatives, the budget bill specifically calls out that one program. It requires legislative approval for the program’s funds to be disbursed. 

    So, Fiedler sought out exactly that when she authored HB 362, a bill that would force the Legislature to vote on allowing the Pennsylvania Energy Development Authority, the state’s independent financing authority, to distribute funds it has already been awarded. Fiedler said the funds are already under contract with the federal government.

    HB 362 passed the House Energy Committee, which Fiedler chairs, in March. It now sits in the state House, home to a slim one-vote Democratic majority, as a battle to free the money falters after being confronted with a last-minute hurdle. 

    Two days after the bill passed, Representative Craig Williams, a Republican for Chester County, introduced an amendment that would require the state’s utility regulator to promulgate regulations on net metering — a system that allows residential solar users to sell surplus energy back to the grid to incentivize the buildout of rooftop solar. Environmentalists fear the amendment could open the door to doing away with net metering — a major financial incentive for many residential solar owners. 

    Reforming net metering has long been a priority of the American Legislative Exchange Council, a conservative lobbying firm that disburses model bills to states, including those fighting renewable energy and attacking environmentalists.

    The group argues that paying solar owners for the energy they produce is costly for utilities — they pay them retail rates, rather than wholesale rates, and residential solar producers may end up generating enough energy to offset distribution fees they’d pay for the wires that move energy around the grid. Utilities then pass those costs onto consumers, and nonsolar users end up subsidizing their neighbors with solar panels, they argue. Williams has used similar language in opposing solar legislation; environmentalists generally disagree with this premise.

    Critics were quick to point out that, prior to joining the Pennsylvania House in 2020, Williams spent more than 10 years as general counsel for PECO, a Philadelphia-based utility that has come under fire from environmentalists for neglecting to increase its share of renewable energy.

    State lobbying and campaign finance records show the company spent more than $600,000 on lobbying in 2024, and donated $6,000 to Williams in 2024 between a failed run for attorney general and a successful campaign to keep his seat in the state House. The trade group that represents PECO and other utilities, the Edison Electric Institute, has long challenged net metering as states have grown their share of solar production.

    “The more people who generate energy from their homes, the less [utilities] get to build out their larger operations,” said Elowyn Corby, mid-Atlantic regional director for Vote Solar Action.

    Williams’ amendment passed with support on both sides of the aisle. Environmentalists, however, consider it a poison pill — one that could weaken the state’s fledgling solar industry. 

    “In Pennsylvania, probably the best thing we have going for solar is net metering,” said Masur, the PennEnvironment director.

    Minus Williams’ amendment, Fiedler’s Solar for All bill makes common sense, Corby said. 

    “At its heart, the goal of this legislation is to make sure Pennsylvania doesn’t send federal money that belongs to our neighbors back to D.C.,” Fiedler said. 

    The Solar for All program focuses specifically on serving homeowners who might otherwise be unable to afford solar panels of their own. In Pennsylvania, funds are specifically earmarked for low-income households, who are guaranteed at least 20 percent savings on their electricity bills. 

    It’s unclear whether Fiedler will push forward to advance HB 362 now that it includes a threat to net metering.

    In the coming months, the state Legislature may also vote on initiatives that would put solar panels on municipal and emergency response buildings; warehouses and distribution centers; and townhouses governed by homeowners associations. 

    Shapiro has proposed reupping the Solar for Schools program’s $25 million appropriation in the 2025-2026 budget, set to be finalized by June 30. Though Fiedler said she’s pleased to see the program reinstated, she said “that that number is the minimum we should budget.” 

    Jim Gregory, a former state representative and now executive director of the Conservative Energy Network-Pennsylvania, has committed himself to convincing his former colleagues of the importance of renewables in a diverse state energy portfolio. 

    “If that money is going to be made available, we want to see it made available to low- and moderate-income families in rural Pennsylvania,” he said. 

    Gregory said he’s watched as attitudes toward solar among conservatives in state government have shifted. 

    “I don’t oppose anyone who wants to put solar on their rooftop or anything like that to help with utility bills,” said Representative Kathy Rapp, a Republican for Warren, at a recent meeting of the House Energy committee on Fiedler’s bill. Rapp has, for several sessions, introduced legislation requiring solar operators to create end-of-life plans for their arrays, which has yet to pass. 

    Though far from an all-out embrace of solar, Rapp’s language offers a window into a softening stance on renewables. In 2019, Rapp wrote on her Facebook profile that solar and wind energy pose “serious environmental risks,” and called its supporters “radical Green New Deal proponents.” 

    Despite past roadblocks, Fiedler remains optimistic about the fate of solar initiatives in the state. She sees the Solar for Schools program as evidence of broadening support for clean energy. 

    “I believe there is political will for solar and all types of energy development in the state,” she said. “A lot of that success comes from the broad stakeholder coalition we built and from the support of colleagues on the other side of the aisle.” 

    For school districts like Tunkhannock, the state’s ability to reach consensus has very real consequences. With the fate of federal solar tax credits unclear, district leaders say they are currently on the edge of their seats. The Solar for Schools grant could end up being a lifeline. 

    “To say not getting potentially a million dollars in grant money wouldn’t affect us at all I think would be a lie,” said Suppon, the school district’s chief operating officer.

    Copyright 2025 Capital & Main

    This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Solar grants held hostage in Pennsylvania legislature — as demand soars on May 18, 2025.


    This content originally appeared on Grist and was authored by Audrey Carleton, Capital & Main.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Trump’s 2-year reprieve gives coal plants ‘a free pass to pollute’

    Last year, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency gave this country’s nearly 200 remaining coal-fired power plants until 2027 to install or improve air quality monitoring devices on smokestacks to meet federal guidelines to cut hazardous pollutants including mercury, arsenic, lead, and particulate matter. 

    But through executive action, President Donald Trump last month granted a two-year reprieve to some of those plants from the strengthened Mercury and Air Toxics Standards (MATS), which required continuous monitoring of air pollutants. 

    It is part of Trump’s continuing efforts to boost fossil fuel use and undermine President Joe Biden’s push to reduce threats from climate change and improve the health of people living in communities plagued by industrial pollution. The exemption applies to roughly one-third of all U.S. coal plants.

    These toxic and hazardous emissions have been tied to cancer, neurological damage, and developmental disorders, “even at extremely low levels of exposure,” said Margie Kelly, a spokesperson for the nonprofit Natural Resources Defense Council, calling the two-year pause “a free pass to pollute.”  

    “We’re looking at a two-year extension as [a] step … to get rid of these mercury and particulate matter standards and get rid of the continuous emissions monitoring requirement altogether,” said Joseph Goffman, a former assistant administrator of the EPA’s Office of Air and Radiation under Biden.

    The extension, which was among the list of deregulatory actions announced by EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin, has drawn strong criticism from environmental groups, including those in Louisiana, where three coal-fired powered plants still operate. Burning fossil fuels to generate electricity is one of the top contributors to greenhouse gas emissions.

    The state’s largest electric provider, which owns one coal plant and shares ownership of a second — has said it already complies with the existing standards and plans to retire its coal-powered generation in the next five years. But advocates worry the shift in the country’s regulatory landscape will worsen health risks for fenceline communities — and that promises to shutter coal plants could be reversed — as projected electrical demand continues to sharply rise.

    “I think that it would be a mistake for us to rely on a corporation to do the right thing just because they want to,” said Emory Hopkins, organizer for the Sierra Club’s Beyond Coal Campaign in Louisiana. 

    “I think something that might be worth noting is that we’re looking at a lot of load growth in the coming years, which is a lot more electric demand, energy demand,” primarily from data centers, Hopkins said.

    President: Rules are ‘unattainable’ 

    In his executive order, Trump said granting the two-year extension would safeguard the nation’s power supply by not forcing electric companies to comply with “unattainable” emissions standards. The EPA under Trump now says the enhanced MATS rule would cause “regulatory uncertainty” for many U.S. coal plants. 

    After Trump’s action, the Tennessee Valley Authority, a federal utility that generates power to seven states, announced it plans to walk back commitments to retire coal-powered plants by 2035.

    By the EPA’s current estimates, the strengthened MATS rule would cost energy companies more than $790 million over 10 years. Trump’s order stated that many coal-fired power plants were at risk of shutting down to meet the compliance standards, which would have led to significant job losses and weakened the country’s electrical grid. 

    In reality, coal-powered plants were already on the decline due to cheaper sources for electric power generation including natural gas, wind, and solar — the latter two being the preferred option for greenhouse gas reduction. 

    A bar chart of coal-fired generation capacity

    Goffman said the MATS rule changes were projected to reduce mercury emissions by 1,000 pounds. The World Health Organization has said even in small doses, mercury can cause serious health complications to a person’s nervous, digestive, and immune systems. 

    Goffman added that the changes passed by the Biden administration last year incorporated advances in filtering out particulates, which were not available when the mercury rules were first enacted in 2012. The enhanced MATS rule would have reduced particulate matter by 770 tons, and carbon dioxide — a potent greenhouse gas — by 65,000 tons by 2028, resulting in millions of dollars in benefits to human health and the climate, he said. 

    “If there’s one pollutant that you would worry about more than any other, when it comes to making people sick and killing them, it’s fine particles,” he said. “So within reason, the more you can cut fine particles, the better off everyone’s health is going to be.” 

    Biden’s EPA also projected there would be little cost to electricity customers. The agency under Biden also said no coal-fired plants would be forced to shut down, and there would have been no major disruptions to energy production.  

    “I want to emphasize that these rules were not intended to prompt coal plants to shut down,” Goffman said. “The Clean Air Act doesn’t authorize EPA’s regulations to do that, and the EPA certainly performed its analysis of the MATS requirements on the assumption that these plants would, and in many cases might need to, keep operating.” 

    ‘Kick in the teeth’ to polluted communities 

    The Sierra Club, a nationwide grassroots environmental organization, noted in a 2020 report that coal-fired power plants in Louisiana accounted for just 8 percent of the state’s electric power but were to blame for an estimated 51 deaths and 349 asthma attacks annually. 

    The Roy S. Nelson, a coal-fired plant mostly owned by Entergy Louisiana in Lake Charles, has the largest number of people in the state living within a 12-mile radius — a population of about 153,000. 

    Michael Tritico, a local environmental advocate who grew up in Lake Charles, said people there rarely oppose Entergy Louisiana, or any of the industrial facilities, despite the impacts to their health. 

    “The company always gets what it wants, and the neighbors never stand up,” he said. “They figure industry is their bread and butter, so they let it go.”

    Smoke billows from the James H. Miller Jr. Electrical Generating Plant in Jefferson County, Alabama, owned by Alabama Power.
    Lee Hedgepeth / Inside Climate News

    Brandon Scardigli, a spokesperson for Entergy Louisiana, said the company remains committed to ending its coal-generated power by the end of 2030. And as for its Nelson plant, he said it will continue to operate under the current MATS standards until then.

    “This exemption does not change the applicable EPA standard for mercury emissions control, and Nelson 6 will continue to operate in compliance with this standard,” he said. “We have continued to maintain and operate Nelson 6 in compliance with existing environmental regulations.”

    Joshua Smith, a senior attorney with the Sierra Club’s Environmental Law Program, said it will be important to press the company to keep those promises to an area already facing increased pollution.   

    “That Lake Charles area is already facing a pretty big buildout of liquefied natural gas facilities and other types of industry,” Smith said. “In general with these kinds of facilities, if they’re given flexibility and latitude, they’ll take it.” 

    Smith added that the Sierra Club is exploring legal actions it can take to push back against the exemption, which could be extended beyond two years if Trump wants. 

    “I think it’s a pretty destructive use of executive privilege,” he said. “What’s happening here is the [Trump administration] is allowing these facilities to pollute more at the very tail end of their life … [and] damaging the community that has already been bearing the brunt of the pollution for the better part of 40 or 50 years. 

    “It’s just like one more kick in the teeth on the way out the door.”

    This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Trump’s 2-year reprieve gives coal plants ‘a free pass to pollute’ on May 17, 2025.


    This content originally appeared on Grist and was authored by Terry L. Jones, Floodlight.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Build Inspiring Alternatives To Counter Authoritarianism

    We are heading down a perilous road. Vulnerable communities face growing threats. The climate crisis is outpacing scientists’ worst predictions. Authoritarianism is no longer a distant possibility — it is rising, with democracy backsliding across the globe. With Trump’s return, public services like education, labor protections, humane immigration policies, health care and diversity programs are being dismantled.

    Meanwhile, trust in democracy is eroding — especially among young people. As political scientist Steven Levitsky points out, part of the problem is motivational: The political right is fighting for a clear, albeit dangerous, vision. The left, by contrast, is often fighting against that vision, with fewer compelling alternatives on offer.

    The post Build Inspiring Alternatives To Counter Authoritarianism appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.

  • ‘This Budget Would Give Polluters the Green Light’: CounterSpin interview with Ashley Nunes on public land selloff

     

    Janine Jackson interviewed the Center for Biological Diversity’s Ashley Nunes about the selloff of public lands for the May 9, 2025, episode of CounterSpin. This is a lightly edited transcript.

     

    Common Dreams: On This Earth Day, Get Out and Fight Against Trump’s Greed and Destruction

    Common Dreams (4/22/25)

    Janine Jackson: 

    From lease sales to expedited permitting processes, the committee’s proposal creates an unprecedented pathway for developing our vast natural resources on federal lands and waters for generations to come.

    That’s a response to a piece of the budget reconciliation bill making its way through Congress, and it comes from the American Petroleum Institute. So you can sense what’s up, and why our guest calls this piece of Republicans’ effort to fund Trump’s tax cuts for billionaires nothing more than opportunities for industry to plunder, profit and pollute.

    Ashley Nunes is a specialist in public lands policy at the Center for Biological Diversity. She joins us now by phone. Welcome to CounterSpin, Ashley Nunes.

    Ashley Nunes: Thank you, Janine. Good to be with you.

    Outdoor Alliance: Public Lands and Waters Deserve Better than Reconciliation Package

    Outdoor Alliance (5/6/25)

    JJ: Let’s timestamp ourselves. We’re recording on May 8, and this is about the House Natural Resources Committee, and their contribution to the Republican House Reconciliation Bill, that’s going to tell us how to offset the billionaire tax cuts that they want to push through. But it’s not a done deal yet, right?

    AN: Right.

    JJ: So it’s still in process. There are lots of implications, but what would this plan do, particularly with regard to–I could say public lands, but I really appreciate your phrase, “precious wild places.” What would this do?

    AN: So as someone who’s focused on public lands policy, I am most interested in the part of the reconciliation package that’s come out of the House Natural Resources Committee. The proposed Republican budget hands over power to private industries to destroy our public lands and offshore waters. The excessive and indiscriminate development of fossil fuels, minerals and timber will harm wildlife and communities. This reckless development would undermine environmental protections. It would simply make air and water quality worse. And, of course, that’s harmful for wildlife and communities. So this budget wouldn’t just give tax breaks to billionaires, but it would give polluters the green light to raise emissions, destroy wild places and harm endangered species.

    JJ: In particular, I know that you look at, for example, Alaska. We’re looking at oil leases in Alaska, we’re looking at Minnesota. There are very specific things, and I wonder if you could just lift up some examples for folks to know what we’re talking about.

    AN: Absolutely. This is not an exhaustive list by any means, but I think I could do some highlights industry by industry.

    JJ: Please.

    NRDC: America’s Newly Discovered Whale Is Already in Trouble

    NRDC (4/4/25)

    AN: So let’s start with oil and gas on public lands. This bill would mandate dozens of lease sales every quarter, as you say, also sometimes in very sensitive locations, like the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. There’s also at least 4 million acres on the coastal plains of Alaska for oil and gas, some of the most important bird breeding areas in the country, and really one of the last great wild places, not only in the Arctic, but in the world.

    Then if we go to offshore waters for oil and gas, this bill would mandate six lease sales in Alaska’s Cook Inlet, and at least 30 lease sales in Gulf waters over the next 15 years. This offshore oil and gas development, when it pushes into sensitive ecosystems and deeper waters, it really risks another tragedy like the 2010 Deepwater Horizon explosion and oil spill that resulted in loss of human life and non-human life. The Gulf waters are home to the Rice’s whale, the world’s most endangered whale. So oil and gas here is really doing the most.

    The other fossil fuel we’re mentioning is coal. This bill would open at least 4 million acres for new coal leasing. Coal is a dying and downright dirty industry, but this bill would have taxpayers subsidizing to keep that industry alive.

    So across the board, there’s reduced royalty payments for these fossil fuel companies, for oil, gas and coal. And even though Republicans say that this is a bill intended to raise revenue, polluters get a really good deal here.

    NYT: Biden Shields Millions of Acres of Alaskan Wilderness From Drilling and Mining

    New York Times (4/19/24)

    So that’s just fossil fuels. And if I could say a bit more, as you said, there’s also mining and timber. These are other extractive industries in the bill. So, mining: The bill undoes protections put in place by the Biden administration, it pushes through contentious mining projects, one of which you mentioned. So reversing a ban on 225,000 acres adjacent to Boundary Waters Wilderness in Minnesota, and then also a ban on a 211-mile mining road that would stretch across unspoiled wilderness in Alaska.

    And then for timber, there’s a mandated 25% increase in timber production on public lands. And I fear this puts a target on the biggest and oldest trees, because of their economic value for timber. A bigger tree would produce more timber, but these are also the most ecologically valuable trees for carbon sequestration, habitat protection and wildfire resilience. So this is a huge giveaway to extractive industry that would be hugely harmful for the places we love.

    JJ: And maybe to just pull it out a bit, this is opposing what communities want to do with their land, right? Land use is a local issue, and we hear hollering about states’ rights, but this is actually in opposition to what a number of places have said they want to do with their land.

    AN: That’s right, Janine, and this is wonky, but there are many provisions, across the bill, that would take away environmental review. And that’s the process that allows the public to have their say, to give their input. So if Congress rubberstamps projects, the public doesn’t have that opportunity.

    JJ: It’s so important. The fight to resist clean energy in this country is intense, and it’s also transparent. And those thumbprints are all over this as well. The fossil fuel companies, they’re following tobacco. They’re just going to hold onto it, to the very last penny. And that seems evident in this legislation.

    AN: You’re so right. There are provisions, as I said, to reduce royalties on fossil fuels, and that’s the status quo. But there’s also provisions to add rents for clean energy, renewable energy on public lands. So this is really a giveaway to polluters, and it’s to the detriment of that clean energy transition that we need.

    JJ: I’ll just ask you, finally: I think transparency is the least that reporters could demand from this process, that has such myriad implications. But what would you like to see from journalism on this set of issues? And maybe what would you like to see less of?

    Ashley Nunes, Center for Biodiversity

    Ashley Nunes: “This budget proposal is one of the worst attacks on the environment that we have seen in our lifetime.”

    AN: There’s just so much to say here, really. I think I would just say a couple of things.

    First of all, we were warned that this would happen. This budget bill is the Project 2025 and Agenda 47 playbooks in action. It’s not just “drill, baby, drill,” it’s also “mine, baby, mine” and “log, baby, log.” This proposal uses public resources to enrich private interests. It’s extreme. And if these provisions stay in the reconciliation package, and are enacted, this would be an obscene giveaway of our public resources to private industry, and it would put these places at serious risk. It’s heartbreaking. I think journalists, like you and others, can help people understand what’s at stake.

    So, secondly, I would just add that we are living through a climate crisis and an extinction crisis, and this budget proposal is one of the worst attacks on the environment that we have seen in our lifetime. It would not only cause harm to our cherished landscapes, coastal waters and wildlife, but also to our public health, and our ability to recreate on our public lands across the country. So people want to know what they can do, and ultimately, people need to call their congressional representatives and tell them to vote no, to stop.

    JJ: We’ve been speaking with Ashley Nunes, public lands policy specialist at the Center for Biological Diversity. They’re online at BiologicalDiversity.org. Thank you so much, Ashley Nunes, for joining us this week on CounterSpin.

    AN: Thanks, Janine.

    This post was originally published on FAIR.

  • If you want to claim the solar tax credit, install now

    For the last two decades, homeowners have been able to claim thousands of dollars in federal tax credits to help offset the high upfront costs of going solar. Things were supposed to stay that way through 2034. But, this week, the U.S. House of Representatives proposed abruptly ending the incentives at the end of the year. If this idea survives the House and passes the Senate, it could upend the economic calculus of powering your home with the sun. 

    “It would put solar out of reach for millions of people,” said Glen Brand, director of policy and advocacy at Solar United Neighbors, a non-profit that encourages adoption of the technology. “What the House has done is to put ordinary Americans in a really hard place. They are basically saying they aren’t going to help people with rising energy costs.”

    The country’s first solar tax credits took effect in 1978, but were allowed to lapse in 1985, when President Ronald Regan was in office. In 2005, however, another Republican — President George W. Bush — revived them. Lawmakers have extended and tweaked the incentives ever since, mostly recently with the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act, or IRA, which set the credit at 30 percent of the cost of a system until 2032, before a two-year phase out. 

    The average cost of a solar system in the U.S. right now is just north of $28,000, according to Zoë Gaston, a principal analyst for residential solar at the energy consultant Wood MacKenzie. That means a tax credit would be worth around $8,500. 

    On Tuesday, the House Ways and Means Committee released an initial budget reconciliation proposal that would roll back large swaths of the IRA, including support for residential solar. The so-called 25D tax credit would still apply for systems that are installed this year, and then it would go away completely. 

    Without the tax credits, solar systems might still make financial sense in places that get a lot of sun or have high electricity prices, or both, but the payback period will likely grow. For other people, the math may no longer work at all. 

    “We would expect sales and installation to surge this year, followed by a market contraction,” said Gaston. “If a homeowner is thinking about solar and can afford it,” now would be the time.” 

    The 25D credit isn’t the only relevant tax break under threat. Another credit, 48E, is available to businesses that install solar on homes where the resident then either leases the equipment or enters into a power purchase agreement. This allows companies to reduce what they charge customers. According to Gaston, more than half of residential installations now follow this third-party ownership model. 

    Instead of eliminating 48E, the House favors applying limits on where the material in photovoltaic panels comes from. While experts are still sorting out exactly what the proposed language means, it generally aims to bar participation of “foreign entities of concern” — including those in China, where the vast majority of solar components are made. 

    “It puts the obligation on the installer or the developer to trace back the supply chain in a way that’s completely impossible,” said Sean Gallagher, senior vice president of policy at the Solar Energy Industries Association, a trade group. This, he said, could effectively make the 48E credit effectively impossible to access starting in 2026. 

    The current House language could at least temporarily push folks toward the third-party ownership options, said Gaston. But when Wood MacKenzie did an analysis, before the House draft, that assumed a phase out of credits by 2028, it still projected a 30 percent drop in installed residential capacity by the end of the decade. 

    “It’s going to be devastating for companies, their employees, and their customers,” said Gallagher. “It’ll kill an industry that supports hundreds of thousands of workers and tens of billions of dollars in investment every year.”

    The House move isn’t the only headwind the solar industry is facing. Some states, most notably California, for example, have lowered the amount the homeowners can earn selling power to the grid, making solar less lucrative. Even before Republicans took control of Congress and the White House, companies were starting to let employees go. More layoffs have ensued.  

    Some Republicans have acknowledged the role that energy tax credits play in the economy, and their districts. Twenty-one House members of the party signed a letter to Ways and Means Chairman Jason Smith expressing concern about “disruptive changes to our nation’s energy tax structure.” Four Republican Senators also wrote to Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD) urging “a targeted, pragmatic approach” to any changes. 

    “This is going to turn on what the Senate does,” said Brand, about the future of the solar credits. He believes it’s unlikely that the House proposal will become law in its current form and is optimistic that the rollbacks will be rectified. “This is a piece the Senate can get right.” 

    But the harm to the solar industry is already being done, said Jacquelyn Pless, a professor who researches energy and environmental economics at the MIT Sloan School of Management. The constant back and forth over policy, she said, makes it extremely difficult for companies to plan ahead. 

    “Policy volatility is really my bigger concern,” Pless said. “Policy uncertainty alone can start to freeze investment, raise costs, and damage market confidence.”

    This story was originally published by Grist with the headline If you want to claim the solar tax credit, install now on May 16, 2025.

    This post was originally published on Grist.

  • It’s Possible To End Global Poverty Without Compromising Climate Goals

    As the world works to stop global heating by ending the use of fossil fuels in accordance with climate objectives, ensuring that everyone on Earth has a decent standard of living is possible if the world quickly and decisively implements emissions reductions, new research has found.

    The study, led by research scholar Jarmo Kikstra with the Energy, Climate and Environment Program at the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA), looked at energy scenarios that line up with both the Paris Agreement and Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

    “With climate change intensifying and billions of people still lacking basic necessities, addressing both challenges simultaneously is not only possible but essential,” a press release from IIASA said.

    The post It’s Possible To End Global Poverty Without Compromising Climate Goals appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.

  • Retrofit For The Future Campaign Takes Demands To The Heart Of Government

    In March, a coalition of groups launched the vital new ‘Retrofit For the Future’ campaign – and already, it’s making waves.

    Notably, the coalition has secured a meeting with a key minister inside the Department of Energy Security and Net Zero (DESNZ) to demand the government put renters’ and workers’ rights at the heart of a green and just transition in the housing sector. Fuel Poverty Action, ACORN, Greener Jobs Alliance, Medact, and the Peace & Justice Project, among others, set the ball rolling on a retrofit revolution that calls for housing fit for the future.

    In particular, the campaign demands that the government direct its attention to retrofit-upgrading and improving existing homes. It argues that doing so is a key to tackling both the climate emergency and the housing crisis.

    The post Retrofit For The Future Campaign Takes Demands To The Heart Of Government appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.

  • Colorado’s rural electric co-ops are determined to go green

    Eric Eriksen puts in long nights and weekends to keep the lights on in southern Colorado. As the CEO of the San Luis Valley Rural Electric Cooperative, Eriksen leads a member-owned nonprofit that provides electric service to more than 7,500 people across seven rural counties in the Rocky Mountains — a small cooperative serving a large area.

    After Eriksen took over the post in 2023, the utility’s members urged him to apply for a flurry of federal funds available through Biden-era legislation. It was a heavy lift for Eriksen’s team to take on 150- to 200-page federal grant applications. They had to do it fast, he said, and they had to be good at it. Even then, they knew, the application might be denied.

    It paid off: The electric cooperative was awarded $1.7 million from the U.S. Department of Agriculture in January 2025 to construct two 1-megawatt solar farms. (The co-op’s peak electric demand is around 70 megawatts, and it already has one 3 MW solar farm.) But just weeks later, President Donald Trump issued an executive order pausing climate and energy spending. As of press time, billions of dollars of funding for rural electric cooperatives, including the San Luis Valley co-op, remains in Washington, D.C.

    Ratepayers themselves own rural electric cooperatives and elect the board of directors. Co-ops tend to have older equipment than for-profit utilities. They often use less renewable energy than America’s electric grid as a whole and typically have fewer financial resources to invest in large projects.

    To help fill this gap, the Department of Agriculture launched new programs as part of the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act that altogether mark the largest investment in rural electrification since the 1930s. The $9.7 billion Empowering Rural America, known as New ERA for short, and the $1 billion Powering Affordable Clean Energy, or PACE, offered grants and loans to electric cooperatives and other energy companies to build new clean energy facilities and upgrade infrastructure.

    “[Electric co-ops] are often at the center of what is going on in a community, and they need to thrive for rural America to grow and prosper,” said Andy Berke, who served as the administrator for the USDA’s Rural Utilities Service, overseeing rural electricity programs, from 2022 until January 2025.

    At the end of Biden’s term, the USDA announced awards for 49 rural electric co-ops through New ERA to fund everything from wind, solar, and battery storage to expediting coal plant retirements, upgrading transmission lines, and starting programs to help stabilize the grid during high demand. The PACE program funded 59 organizations, including rural electric co-ops and private energy providers, largely to build solar and battery facilities. The plans co-ops submitted would boost energy supply without big price hikes, Berke said.

    “[Electric co-ops] are often at the center of what is going on in a community, and they need to thrive for rural America to grow and prosper.”

    — Andy Berke, former administrator for the Rural Utilities Service

    High Country News spoke with several former USDA officials and employees or board members at a half-dozen electric cooperatives across Colorado that were set to receive funding from these programs. Some cooperatives met with their representatives and traveled to Washington to urge the new administration to follow through on promised grants.

    Then, in late March, the USDA announced that it would release the promised funding. But there was a catch. 

    In a press release, the agency asked grant winners to submit revised plans within 30 days “eliminating Biden-era DEIA and climate mandates embedded in previous proposals.” The announcement indicates that these revisions are voluntary, and an online form says grantees that do not wish to alter their projects can notify the agency to initiate transfer of funds. 

    The USDA did not respond to questions from High Country News. Although uncertainty remains about project revisions and timelines, electric co-ops are tentatively confident that they will eventually receive the money.

    Electric cooperative funding is one part of the IRA that’s apparently getting a green light after initially being frozen. The USDA is also unfreezing $1 billion for agricultural producers and rural small businesses to generate clean energy, and the Environmental Protection Agency released $7 billion in solar funding in February. Still, as of press time, the Trump administration was withholding billions more in IRA funds.

    Agriculture is the core of the San Luis Valley’s economy. The 2,800 miles of power lines across sparsely populated terrain cost each San Luis Valley co-op member more to maintain than the grid of any Colorado city or the average rural co-op, Eriksen said. With the sun providing free power, the project slated for funding through New ERA was expected to save the co-op $200,000 per year. “It’s huge,” Eriksen said. “Gosh, these are real dollars that are going to change people’s lives.” 

    Electric cooperatives are especially vital in Colorado, where 22 individual co-ops distribute electricity across most of the state. They largely emerged in the 1930s and ’40s to serve rural regions neglected by investor-owned utilities because expanding across vast areas with few customers was unprofitable. Co-ops prioritize safety — storms can down power lines, and improperly monitored and maintained lines can spark wildfires — reliability and affordability.   

    But now, the pressure is on for co-ops in Colorado to invest in renewable energy, following passage of state laws starting in 2019 that require utilities to slash their greenhouse gas emissions by 80 percent by 2030. Ten rural Colorado co-ops were collectively awarded $800 million in New ERA and PACE funding, the most recipients of any state. 

    The federal investment represents a “generational opportunity to make progress in the clean energy transition space,” said Ted Compton, board president of La Plata Electric Association, another Colorado co-op that was awarded $13.4 million through PACE to build solar and battery storage. 

    With the sun providing free power, the project slated for funding through New ERA was expected to save the co-op $200,000 per year.

    Few co-ops generate all their electricity, relying instead on Tri-State Generation and Transmission Association, a large nonprofit active in Colorado, Arizona, Nebraska, New Mexico, and Wyoming, which owns coal-fired power plants and utility-scale solar installations. In an email, Lee Boughey, vice president for strategic communications, said Tri-State is forecasting significant electricity load growth and needs infrastructure upgrades. Reliable, affordable power is the “lifeblood of rural communities, farmers, ranchers,” and other industries, he wrote. Tri-State was also awarded $2.5 billion through New ERA to add more than a gigawatt of renewable energy and help offset the cost of closing down several coal-powered units. Without that money, the consequences — in the form of dirtier energy or a more costly transition to renewables — could ripple across the West.

    Experts have questioned the legality of the Trump administration’s attempt to withhold federal dollars. “Only Congress has the power of the purse,” said Jillian Blanchard, a lawyer and the vice president of climate change and environmental justice at Lawyers for Good Government, a nonprofit that supports pro bono attorneys. Many grant winners already have a signed legal agreement with the federal government, and in addition to infringing on Congress’ authority, Blanchard said withholding those funds violates the Impoundment Control Act of 1974.  

    In the San Luis Valley, beginning solar construction without the $1.7 million would be slower, cost ratepayers more and, in the meantime, require burning more fossil fuels. Eriksen said he intends to forge ahead; he already has designs, a contractor, and a shovel-ready location, though he can’t take the next step until the funding question is settled. 

    “We’re waiting and seeing to get some certainty before we move forward,” Eriksen said.   

    This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Colorado’s rural electric co-ops are determined to go green on May 10, 2025.

    This post was originally published on Grist.

  • Trump calls program to help low-income Americans pay their energy bills ‘unnecessary’

    Last year, the Low Income Energy Assistance Program, or LIHEAP, distributed nearly $4 billion to households struggling to pay their energy bills. It’s a lifeline for more than 6 million families, but in recent months the program has become a target for funding cuts.

    In early April, Donald Trump’s administration laid off the roughly dozen staff members at the Department of Health and Human Services who oversaw the program. Because HHS hadn’t yet distributed all of the funding for this fiscal year, the staff cuts put about $400 million in jeopardy. Senator Susan Collins, the Republican chair of the powerful Senate Appropriations Committee, sent a letter to Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the HHS secretary, asking him to reverse course “on any staffing or funding cuts that would jeopardize the distribution of these funds to our constituents.” 

    Then, HHS temporarily rehired one of the employees who’d been laid off. That person’s job was to determine how much LIHEAP money states and other recipients receive. They were brought back on to release the remaining $400 million, which the agency did last Thursday. 

    In a budget proposal released the next day, the White House proposed ending the program altogether. The Trump White House said LIHEAP is “unnecessary” and that the administration would “support low-income individuals through energy dominance, lower prices, and an America First economic platform.” 

    “It’s a cruel proposal,” said Mark Wolfe, executive director of the National Energy Assistance Directors’ Association, which represents managers of state LIHEAP programs. “They’re proposing to zero it out, and that would cause significant harm to some of the poorest families in the country.”

    Trump’s budget proposal is, at this point, just that — a proposal. Every year, the president’s submission serves as a starting point for Congress’ budget process. Ultimately, Congress controls the purse strings of the federal government and makes decisions about appropriations for LIHEAP. Historically, Congress has championed LIHEAP. Since 2009, the program, which was created in the 1980s, has received no less than $3 billion from Congress. At the height of the pandemic, Congress appropriated more than $8 billion through LIHEAP. 

    But the Trump proposal is a signal of the administration’s priorities — it recommends a nearly 23 percent cut in overall federal spending — and HHS still decides whether and how to distribute LIHEAP funds. Staff at the program, who have now been laid off, are responsible for divvying up the money to states, tribes, and territories based on a complex formula that takes climate, demographics, and various other factors into account. Without staff to run the program and given the administration’s position, HHS could decide not to disburse any funds Congress appropriates for the next fiscal year, which begins October 1.

    “They’ve been slow-walking the funds, they have been delaying payments — and in this case, since they’re making the argument this program is no longer necessary, why would they release the funds?” said Wolfe.

    In addition to questioning the program’s necessity, the White House referenced a long-closed audit of the program by the Government Accountability Office. The 2010 report found 11,000 applications for LIHEAP with names of dead people and 1,000 applications from federal employees whose salaries exceeded the income thresholds set by the program. In response to these findings, HHS required states to collect social security numbers as a condition of LIHEAP eligibility and to cross-reference applications with death data. These changes took effect by 2014, and the Government Accountability Office closed the report. 

    “It’s just factually inaccurate to say that those findings are the case,” said a former HHS employee who was responsible for LIHEAP compliance and was recently laid off. They said that the program now requires applicants to provide social security numbers, proof of income, and an active utility bill. “And ultimately, someone has to physically come in to apply for the program.

    “In my time at HHS and overseeing the LIHEAP program, the majority of the compliance findings had more to do with improving the program to make it more effective and more efficient — not related to fraud, waste, or abuse,” they said.

    As the Collins letter indicates, the Trump administration does seem sensitive to public and congressional pressure to fund LIHEAP. Wolfe and others Grist spoke to said it was likely the biggest factor in the administration releasing the remaining $400 million. Given Collins’ crucial role in the budget-making process, the Trump administration could opt to distribute the funds as instructed. But given that the administration wants to end funding for the program and the fact that the staff responsible for running it have been laid off, it’s unclear what might happen if Congress appropriates money for LIHEAP in the coming months.

    The lack of certainty about the program trickles down to the state and local implementers of LIHEAP, said Katrina Metzler, executive director of the National Energy and Utility Affordability Coalition.

    “Typically, they would have reached out to our federal partners at HHS to answer questions that they have, but those staff have been eliminated,” she said. “There’s just a lot of unrest and uncertainty.”   

    This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Trump calls program to help low-income Americans pay their energy bills ‘unnecessary’ on May 9, 2025.

    This post was originally published on Grist.

  • Jumping to Blame Renewables for Iberian Outage

     

    The world doesn’t know yet what caused the dramatic power outage on the Iberian Peninsula (BBC, 4/28/25). Nevertheless, the right-wing press both in the US and Britain quickly exploited it to dubiously suggest that the blame rested with Spain’s push for more renewable energy sources. The insinuation that clean energy is at fault has even infected outlets like the New York Times and AP.

    NY Post: Devastating blackout in Spain raises questions about reliance on solar power, wind power

    New York Post (4/30/25): “Experts have previously warned that Europe’s increasing reliance on renewable energy…could lead to blackouts and other supply issues.”

    The right-wing New York Post (4/30/25), while admitting that a final determination on the cause of the outage in Spain hadn’t surfaced, ran with the headline “Devastating Blackout in Spain Raises Questions About Reliance on Solar Power, Wind Power.” As the Rupert Murdoch–owned tabloid criticized the Spanish government’s response, it reminded its readers that that government is “socialist.” It cited “experts” four times to pin blame on “renewables,” while naming only one. That expert noted that solar plants’ lack of inertia—which, the Post explained, is something produced by “gas and nuclear power plants,” means that “imbalances must be corrected more quickly.” (Inertia is not a characteristic unique to non-renewable energy, as the Post suggests; hydroelectric energy, another popular renewable, uses turbines and produces inertia.)

    An op-ed by anti-environmentalists Gabriel Calzada and Fernández Ordóñez in Murdoch’s Wall Street Journal (4/30/25) said that “Spain’s system was engineered politically, not rationally.” They blamed “energy-transitionist ideologues” on the continent for the blackout, because they “forced in” renewables.

    Again, while admitting that the cause of the outrage had yet to be determined, they echoed the Post’s suggestion that renewable sources are by their nature “unreliable,” focusing on their lack of “inertia”:

    The greater the share of renewables vis-à-vis conventional power plants with synchronous turbines, the less inertia there is to cushion instantaneous load fluctuations in the grid.

    This causes the whole system to become “increasingly fragile, with higher risk of failure.”

    The far-right journal Compact (4/29/25) said renewable “sources, especially photovoltaic solar, can’t supply the requisite inertia the grid needs.” Admitting that the cause of the outrage was still unknown, it hoped the affair would repopularize climate-ravaging forms of power generation against woke wind farms and soyboy solar plants:

    Whatever the cause, this blackout could have a salutary impact on European energy policy if it dissuades countries from pursuing aggressive renewable energy policies that make power less reliable.

    The importance of inertia

    Energy Central: Overcoming Grid Inertia Challenges in the Era of Renewable Energy

    Energy Central (8/14/24): “While transitioning to a renewable-based power grid presents challenges, the benefits significantly surpass the risks.”

    The loss of power for Spain and Portugal, a major crisis reminiscent of the great northeast American blackout of the summer of 2003 (WABC, 8/14/23), has taught the world an important lesson about centrality of inertia in the electricity systems built around traditional energy sources. Gas, nuclear and hydroelectric plants use giant spinning turbines that “store kinetic energy, which helps stabilize the grid by balancing supply and demand fluctuations,” explained Energy Central (8/14/24). “High inertia means the system can better withstand sudden disturbances, such as a generator tripping or a sudden surge in demand.”

    Solar and wind energy, which are in growing use in Iberia and seen as a clean alternative in an age of climate crisis, lack this feature, which means integrating them into energy grids requires alternative ways of addressing energy fluctuation problems. It’s something engineers have long understood, and have been addressing with a variety of technical solutions (Green Tech Media, 8/7/20; IET Renewable Power Generation, 11/10/20).

    In general, questions of inertia are an important concern of energy planners when it comes to balancing clean energy and the need to stabilize the grid. But they’re not the only way the grid is stabilized.

    A Spanish professor of electrical engineering explained in Wired (5/1/25) that both local “meshes,” which help distribute electrical flows, and interconnections with neighboring grids are crucial for preventing the kind of imbalance that apparently led to the Iberian blackout. But the latter has always been Spain’s “weak point,” because of the “geographical barrier of the Pyrenees” mountains. Rather than suggest a pullback from solar or wind, as right-wing media seem to pine for, experts told Wired the needed response was greater interconnection, and more storage mechanisms or stabilizers to account for the reduction in inertia.

    ‘Uniquely vulnerable to outages’

    NYT: How Spain’s Success in Renewable Energy May Have Left It Vulnerable

    New York Times (4/29/25): “The blackout could bolster the argument for retaining conventional generation sources.”

    But the anti-renewable drum beat from the right inspired similar reporting in more centrist corners. The New York Times (4/29/25) took a similar tone, under the headline, “How Spain’s Success in Renewable Energy May Have Left It Vulnerable.” The article itself seemed to have an identity crisis, trying to paint the peninsula’s success in ramping up renewables as a false victory while at the same time acknowledging that it wasn’t just the renewable energy itself that caused the vulnerability:

    The incident exposed how Spain and Portugal, promoted as success stories in Europe’s renewable energy transition, are also uniquely vulnerable to outages, given their relative isolation from the rest of the continent’s energy supply.

    The article did also explain Spain’s relative lack of investment in necessary grid infrastructure and storage. But those who didn’t get past the headline would have come away with the same false impression about renewables as readers of the New York Post.

    The Times (4/30/25) doubled down in a follow-up piece the next day, saying, “The incident has raised questions about whether Spain and Portugal’s rapid shift to renewable energy left them more vulnerable to outages.”

    An AP (4/30/25) explainer, which was also picked up by the Washington Post (4/30/25), used phrases like “renewed attention” and “questions remain” to cast a vague haze over the role of the peninsula’s renewable energy:

    On Tuesday, there was renewed attention on Spain’s renewable energy generation. The southern European nation is a leader in solar and wind power generation, with more than half of its energy last year having come from renewable sources. Portugal also generates a majority of its energy from renewable sources.

    Questions remain about whether Spain’s heavy renewable energy supply may have made its grid system more susceptible to the type of outage that took place Monday. The thinking goes that nonrenewable energy sources, such as coal and natural gas, can better weather the type of fluctuations observed Monday on Spain’s grid.

    After sowing doubt about renewables, the AP wrote that Eamonn Lannoye, managing director at the Electric Power Research Institute, said “it was too early to draw a straight line between Monday’s event and Spain’s solar power generation.”

    ‘You’ve got to get the engineering right’

    Euro News: Fact check: Did wind and solar really cause Portugal and Spain’s mass blackout?

    Euro News (4/29/25): “Far from being the cause of the peninsula’s woes…the large percentage of renewable energy in Spain and the flexibility of hydropower systems enabled the nation to react and recover more quickly.”

    Though none of the outlets above seemed able to find them, some experts suggested neither solar power nor inertia were likely at fault. Euronews (4/29/25) said:

    Some experts have previously voiced concern that Spain’s grid needs to be upgraded to cope with the rapid integration of solar and wind. But others stress the unlikelihood of the mass blackout being down to the intermittent renewables, which the Spanish and Portuguese operators are by now adept at handling.

    Spanish energy think tank Fundacion Renovables explains that renewable power plants with 2MW of power generation or more were disconnected because of a disturbance in the frequency of the power grid—as per national safety protocols.

    Essentially, the disturbance was “a consequence and not a cause,” it said in a statement. SolarPower Europe, UNEF and Global Solar Council also emphasise that photovoltaic power plants did not voluntarily disconnect; they were disconnected from the grid.

    The English edition of the Spanish daily El País (5/1/25) concurred, quoting Pedro Fresco, general director of the Valencia Energy Sector Association:

    The failure of a photovoltaic plant, however large, doesn’t seem likely to be the cause of the collapse of the entire electricity system…. Nor is it true that there weren’t enough synchronous sources at that time: There was nuclear, a lot of hydropower, some solar thermal and combined cycle power, and even cogeneration, coal and renewable waste… In fact, there was more synchronous power than at other times.

    Others pointed more to the grid itself. Reuters’ energy columnist Ron Bousso (4/30/25) said the “issue appears to be the management [emphasis added] of renewables in the modern grid.” The outage, he said,  “should be a stark warning to governments: Investments in power storage and grid upgrades must go hand in hand with the expansion of renewables generation.”

    The Guardian (4/29/25) also intervened, quoting a European energy analyst: “The nature and scale of the outage makes it unlikely that the volume of renewables was the cause.” Further, the paper quoted University of Strathclyde electrical engineer Keith Bell:

    Events of this scale have happened in many places around the world over the years, in power systems using fossil fuels, nuclear, hydro or variable renewables. It doesn’t matter where you are getting the energy from: You’ve got to get the engineering right in order to ensure resilient supplies of electricity.

    Experts say it could take months to determine the exact cause(s) of the outage (New York Times, 4/29/25).

    Exploiting the crisis

    Al Jazeera: Spain’s grid denies renewable energy to blame for massive blackout

    Spanish power company chief Beatriz Corredor (Al Jazeera, 4/30/25): ““These technologies are already stable, and they have systems that allow them to operate as a conventional generation system without any safety issues.”

    The quickness of not only right-wing but also centrist outlets to blame solar and wind power for the debacle is in part rooted in Spain’s right-wing political opposition’s exploitation of the crisis, using it to bash the left-leaning governing parties and Red Eléctrica de España (REE), the nation’s energy company. Al Jazeera (4/30/25) quoted a spokesperson for the right-wing People’s Party:

    Since REE has ruled out the possibility of a cyberattack, we can only point to the malfunctioning of REE, which has state investment and therefore its leaders are appointed by the government.

    It’s easy to see why the People’s Party would politicize this. Just last year, the party fell under heavy criticism in Valencia, where the party is in local power, for its failure to act in the face of dire weather reports that led to massive flooding, killing more than 200 people (AP, 11/9/24). The national blackout has allowed the right to attempt to shift the anger toward the ruling Socialist Workers Party.

    But it’s also par for the course for the right-wing media to defend the conservative alliance with the fossil fuel industry, which is threatened by any move to address the climate crisis. The media’s jump to blame Spain’s renewables for a massive blackout looks a whole lot like their eagerness to (falsely) blame wind power for Texas’s 2021 blackouts (Media Matters, 2/19/21; FAIR.org, 2/26/21).

    While we may eventually know exactly what happened—likely to be a complicated mechanical explanation that should inform us how to better guard against future problems—propagandists know that one should never let a good crisis go to waste.

    This post was originally published on FAIR.

  • A “green backlash” helped conservatives win in Germany. What happens now?

    In February, Germany held an election that had many echoes of the one America held in November. Voters were incensed with inflation — especially electricity prices, which surged 80 percent after Russia invaded Ukraine and never returned to normal. Right-wing parties channeled that fury toward the incumbent government’s green policies, including the pioneering Energiewende decarbonization plan that has made renewable energy more than half of the electricity Germans use today.

    While President Trump has promised to stifle clean energy and bring a fossil-fuel renaissance to the United States, Germany isn’t going that route. On Tuesday, Friedrich Merz of the Christian Democratic Union was sworn in as chancellor, leading a new conservative government in Berlin. It has laid out policies that decelerate, but don’t reverse, the country’s blistering renewables buildout, while easing up on the decarbonization push in buildings and industry.

    The goal: Quickly reduce bills for households and businesses and reinvigorate the economy. Merz says German economic policy has been “almost exclusively geared toward climate protection,” according to Politico. “I want to say it as clearly as I mean it: We will and we must change that.”

    Historically, Europeans have been willing to shoulder the higher costs of aggressive climate and energy policies. But after three years of war in Ukraine, energy prices remain elevated — with household electricity rates still one-third above their pre-war levels — frustrating consumers and raising fears of industrial collapse. European companies face electricity costs 2 to 3 times that of the U.S. and natural gas prices 4 to 5 times higher.

    Elections across the continent last year featured a “green backlash.” Politicians focused on voters’ biggest complaints — migration, the cost of living, a stagnant economy — and ignored climate. Dutch farmers revolted against a law to reduce air pollution; the Italian far right railed against a coming ban on conventional cars.

    However, few interpret these developments as Europeans wanting to ditch the energy transition. In Germany, businesses say the Energiewende needs permitting and regulatory reforms and a greater focus on cost efficiency, not “a chainsaw.”

    Michael Stiefel, a policy officer on people experiencing poverty with Diakonie Deutschland who advocates on behalf of low-income households, including those burdened by energy costs, says he never hears anyone express climate skepticism or opposition to clean energy. “Their main aim is to get to a minimum standard for their own lives,” he said. “A higher living style which would be stable and sufficient.”

    The Energiewende dates to the 1990s, when German leaders resolved to decarbonize the economy, starting with the grid. The plan was to transition from a power system centered on coal and nuclear power to one based on renewables – with natural gas being recruited later as an interim fuel. Germany lacks domestic gas reserves and relied heavily on Russia, which provided 40 percent of the European Union’s imported gas in 2021. Germans financed the wind and solar buildout through surcharges on utility bills.

    The program has remade the German power mix. About 22 gigawatts of coal and nuclear have been retired just since 2020, clearing the way for renewables’ surge. The power grid’s transformation is the main reason Germany’s emissions have fallen by half since the 1990s.

    Race to renew

    Share of electricity production from hydropower, solar, wind, biomass & waste, geothermal, wave, and tidal sources, 2000–2023

    Source: Our World in Data
    Clayton Aldern / Grist

    After invading Ukraine in 2022, Russia sharply reduced gas shipments to Europe, and electricity and fuel prices skyrocketed. In Germany, where three-quarters of buildings are heated by gas or oil, people shivered: In 2022, 5.5 million Germans felt they couldn’t afford to keep their homes warm.

    Europe’s painful lesson: An energy transition without energy security is risky.

    “Energy in my opinion is very geopolitical, and you always have to strive toward diversifying your energy resources,” said Kesavarthiniy Savarimuthu, who leads the European Power Markets team at BloombergNEF. “Somewhere along the line, it just seems like Europe forgot it was building its reliance on a sleeping bear.”

    Germany has replaced most of its Russian gas with fuel from friendlier, if pricier, sources in Europe and the U.S. It also used the war as motivation to accelerate solar and wind buildouts: In 2021 it built 5.7 gigawatts of solar; in 2023 it added about 15 GW. But with 2.2 percent inflation still burdening many Germans, right-wing and far-right politicians had no trouble campaigning against the incumbent, center-left government last year. Merz called wind turbines “ugly” and promised policy “for the majority who can think straight … and not for any green and leftwing nutcases.”

    In April, Merz’ party announced a coalition with other governing partners and laid out its policy plan for the next five years. Some climate advocates read the blueprint with relief, as it stopped short of torching many of Germany’s long-term climate targets, such as achieving net-zero by 2045 and phasing out coal by 2038.

    Merz says his guiding light for energy policy is not climate but “competitiveness.” Taxes and fees on power bills are part of why Germans have some of the most expensive electricity in Europe, according to the International Energy Agency. The new coalition promises to ease these charges so electricity rates drop at least 5 euro cents per kilowatt-hour; that’s about an eighth of the rate the average German household currently pays.

    The coalition agreement says it wants to keep developing all renewable energy sources, but with an emphasis on compatibility with the grid. Power companies have complained that in the rush to hit its renewables targets, Germany has often built solar and wind farms in remote or hard-to-reach places, resulting in higher costs. Geographic mismatches — for example, brisk wind energy in the north not being able to reach customers in the industrial south — mean that electricity prices can spike in one region even as they go below zero in another.

    More controversially, the new government has proposed building 20 gigawatts of natural gas generation by 2030; the whole German power system stands at about 260 GW. Solar and wind are now the cheapest energy sources in most of the world, but they’re still prone to wild swings in productivity —  in December, Germany’s wind output fell 85 percent below normal. Merz is sympathetic to energy-industry arguments that new gas plants can mitigate such eventualities. He’s also proposing to clear red tape for energy storage, which plays a minimal role today but could theoretically serve the same balancing role.

    A likely target of the Merz government is the country’s building energy law, which outlaws most new fossil-fuel heating systems in buildings starting in 2028. Inflation has left many people unable or unwilling to pay the up-front costs for electric systems like heat pumps — an unpopularity that conservatives exploited in the campaign.

    So what, if anything, can be learned from Germany’s experience?

    A worker installs solar panels at the construction site of a new solar energy park as wind turbines spin in the background
    A worker installs solar panels at the construction site of a new solar energy park as wind turbines spin in the background on April 06, 2023. Sean Gallup / Getty Images

    Renewables are cheap, but bills often don’t reflect that

    In principle, renewable energy should lower electric bills. Solar and wind are inexpensive to build, and their fuel is free.

    In practice, the savings often don’t reach consumers. Ratepayers must cover the cost of integrating renewables into the grid, paying for new transmission lines and the backup systems needed to balance nature’s flutters. Conservatively, Germany needs to invest 500 billion euros (about $565 billion) over the next two decades just to upgrade the power grid, estimates Deutsche Bank. These should be one-time investments, but during inflationary times, it’s understandable if people wonder what they’re paying for.

    Worse, many European countries that have greatly expanded renewable energy, including Italy, Spain, Portugal and Germany, nevertheless tend to base power rates on the price of gas. A recent report on European competitiveness said this is a structural flaw, arguing countries should reform pricing so consumers benefit more directly from clean energy.

    Green energy is cheap…eventually

    The good news: Both the U.S. and Europe have made significant headway in decarbonizing their power sectors. The bad: The transportation, buildings, and industrial sectors remain, and the alternative technologies are much less mature. The sticker shock associated with electric cars, hydrogen furnaces, and heat pumps contributed to last year’s green backlash in Europe.

    Still, energy experts argue that electrifying more of the economy eventually lowers costs overall. “If you do this you can really go to a very sustainable, pretty cheap and high-performance energy system. That’s actually the goal,” said Gunnar Luderer, who leads the Energy Transition Lab at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research.

    He said China is moving in this direction. For example, it recently launched a pilot project in nine cities to see if their growing fleets of electric cars can provide battery storage for the system. Recent trends in the Western world raise the question of whether voters are willing to make these kinds of investments.

    Ignore social impacts, risk green backlash

    In Germany, buildings have to pay a carbon tax that rises over time. Germany’s previous government promised to create a fund to help citizens manage these price increases — to the tune of several hundred Euros per year — but cut it for budget reasons, leaving the public with all stick and no carrot. Europeans remain broadly supportive of their governments’ climate policies, but it’s “increasingly clear that this support could fade if the transition is not fair and citizens are left to shoulder the costs on their own,” said a recent report by E3G, a think tank.

    While some governments have sent money to households during crises to help them pay bills, others are tackling the issue at a deeper level. E3G said Bulgaria, Croatia, Italy, Denmark and Poland have all expanded incentives to make homes more energy-efficient — which could not just save citizens money, but help them weather the next crisis.

    This story was originally published by Grist with the headline A “green backlash” helped conservatives win in Germany. What happens now? on May 7, 2025.

    This post was originally published on Grist.

  • Louisana already has 4 LNG terminals. It just added another.

    On many nights, John Allaire can turn off the lights in his house and keep reading a book by the glow of 80-foot-high flares blasting from a gas export terminal a mile away. 

    The prospect of a second liquified natural gas (LNG) terminal in his once-peaceful corner of southwest Louisiana is unsettling for Allaire, a retired oil and gas engineer whose house sits near Calcasieu Pass. 

    “There’s the ongoing noise pollution, ongoing flaring,” he said. “And the light pollution is unbelievable.” 

    Venture Global, the U.S.’s second-largest LNG producer, plans to build a second terminal alongside its Calcasieu Pass facility in sparsely populated Cameron Parish. Venture also owns the newly built Plaquemines LNG terminal, about 20 miles south of New Orleans. 

    The proposed second Venture terminal in Cameron, dubbed CP2, was recently granted an export permit by the U.S. Department of Energy. The permit was the fifth LNG-related approval from the department since President Donald Trump took office and lifted former President Joe Biden’s pause on new LNG permits.

    The Trump administration aims to cut “red tape around projects like CP2” and boost the availability of “affordable, reliable, secure American energy,” U.S. Energy Secretary Chris Wright said in a statement. 

    Louisiana has four LNG terminals and two more are under construction. Many more are welcome, said Louisiana Gov. Jeff Landry. 

    “Every time these projects come to Louisiana, [they] give the people of our state the ability to have their income raised,” he said during a speech last month announcing Australian company Woodside Energy’s decision to invest nearly $18 billion in a stalled terminal project, formerly known as Driftwood LNG, near Lake Charles, about 22 miles north of CP2.

    Environmental groups say reviving the LNG building boom has serious consequences for coastal communities, fisheries and the climate. 

    A white man in a yellow safety vest holds a hardhat and talks into microphones.
    Venture Global CEO Michael Sabel speaks with media alongside at the company’s liquified natural gas export facility alongside Secretary of the Interior Secretary Doug Burgum, Louisiana Governor Jeff Landry and Secretary of Energy Chris Wright, in Plaquemines, Louisiana. Jack Brook / AP Photo

    “It has been damaging to our coast, damaging to our air quality and our water quality,” said Anne Rolfes, director of the Louisiana Bucket Brigade. “It’s destroyed property values [and] it’s certainly damaging to our health.”

    Venture did not respond to a request for comment. 

    LNG is natural gas cooled to a liquid state, compressing its volume and making it easier to store and ship long distances. Six of the country’s eight LNG export terminals dot the western Gulf Coast, including the world’s largest, Sabine Pass LNG in west Cameron. LNG shipments from the U.S. have skyrocketed over the past decade, rising from about 16 billion cubic feet in 2014 to just under 4.4 trillion cubic feet last year, making the U.S. the world leader in LNG exports. A little more than half of U.S. LNG goes to Europe, where demand has slowed in recent years, but Asia is hungry for more, with that continent’s share of exports rising to more than 30 percent last year, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration.   

    Venture’s Calcasieu Pass terminal had a rocky startup process that began in 2022 and ended last month when the facility sent its first shipments. The company’s construction strategy, which relied on pre-fabricated, modular components to speed construction and cut costs, resulted in power outages, several repairs and dozens of pollution violations, according to company documents and a report by the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis. In 2022, the facility exceeded its air pollution permits 139 times, according to the Louisiana Department of Environmental Quality. A March warning letter from DEQ indicated many problems haven’t been fixed. The letter cited recent inspections showing several “areas of concern,” including frequent emissions violations and failures to report air pollution exceedances.

    Much of the pollution comes from flaring, a process often triggered by operational malfunctions that force facilities to burn excess gas to avoid fires or explosions. Flaring emits chemicals that can cause cancer, respiratory illnesses and other health problems. 

    The Calcasieu Pass facility is allowed 60 flaring hours annually by DEQ, but nearby residents allege it goes well over that allowance.

    “It’s been ongoing, sometimes days in a row,” Allaire said. 

    Commercial shrimpers in Cameron and Calcasieu parishes say dredging to deepen waterways for large LNG transport ships has harmed habitat and made fishing harder. 

    “The numbers we’re catching now have decreased drastically,” shrimper Travis Dardar said. 

    Boosting the U.S.’s LNG export prowess is “part of one of the biggest fossil fuel build-outs in our lifetimes,” and will dampen efforts to shift toward cleaner energy sources like solar and wind, said Ethan Nuss, an organizer with the Rainforest Action Network.

    “This will deepen the climate crisis and lock us into decades of emissions,” he said. 

    Rolfes said opposing LNG is now doubly hard because both the state and federal government strongly back the industry. Instead of focusing on regulators, environmental groups may attempt to delay projects through lawsuits or convince the industry’s insurers and investors that LNG is a bad long-term bet. 

    “We’ll keep getting the word out about their accident history [and] their horrible track records as business partners,” Rolfes said. “But we acknowledge the odds are tremendous.”

    This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Louisana already has 4 LNG terminals. It just added another. on May 7, 2025.

    This post was originally published on Grist.

  • Is Georgia Power quietly planning a massive buildout of fossil gas?

    Georgia Power, which expects a boom in power demand from data centers, says it needs to get a lot more electricity online — fast.

    So what kind of power plants does the utility intend to rely on to accomplish this? It’s refusing to say, raising concerns that the state’s largest utility is trying to avoid public scrutiny of plans to build huge amounts of expensive, unnecessary, and polluting fossil-fueled infrastructure.

    Georgia Power filed its mandatory 20-year plan with state regulators in January. In it, the utility proposes keeping several coal-fired power plants open past their previously planned closure dates. That has already earned it an ​“F” grade from the Sierra Club.

    But the integrated resource plan (IRP) also has few details about the mix of energy sources the utility wants to draw on to supply the new electricity generation it says it needs by 2031. Georgia Power puts that amount at 9.5 gigawatts, which is equal to nearly half of its total current generation capacity. This means stakeholders don’t know to what extent the utility plans to build new fossil-gas power plants versus clean energy and batteries.

    That worries environmental and consumer advocates as well as trade groups representing the tech giants whose data center plans are driving Georgia Power’s electricity needs to begin with. For years, these groups have been pressing Georgia Power and the state Public Service Commission to prioritize clean energy, batteries, and other alternatives to fossil-fueled power plants.

    Now, they fear Georgia Power’s secretive IRP process may allow the utility to rush through approval of a gas-heavy plan. By keeping its intentions to itself until the last possible moment, Georgia Power is giving the public little time to digest proposals and respond with economic or environmental counterarguments.

    It also puts the state’s utility regulators in a bind. The utility says it needs to start building these new power plants ASAP or else grid reliability will suffer. That sense of urgency may give regulators little choice but to approve Georgia Power’s plans as-is.

    “It’s very confusing, and it’s very concerning for us to be planning a future of growth without knowing how we’re going to meet it,” said Jennifer Whitfield, senior attorney at the Southern Environmental Law Center, one of several groups demanding more information on Georgia Power’s plans. ​“And that’s the position we’re in until we know more.”

    Georgia Power’s missing gigawatts

    Whitfield brought up the issue at a Public Service Commission hearing last month. Georgia Power’s IRP has identified only 517 megawatts of projects, she pointed out. The utility is seeking out the remaining roughly 9 GW of resources needed by 2031 through an ​“all-source RFP,” or request for proposals. The process is separate from the IRP — and shrouded in confidentiality.

    That’s a problem, Whitfield said at the hearing, because state law requires IRPs to provide ​“the size and type of facilities” that a utility expects to own or operate over the next 10 years. Yet, in Georgia Power’s current IRP, ​“95 percent of the need to fill capacity in Georgia in 2031 is not made available,” she said. ​“How are we supposed to effectively intervene to judge the economic mix without additional information?”

    Jeffrey Grubb, Georgia Power’s director of resource planning, replied at the hearing that those details are, ​“by commission rule, not publicly available because that could have detrimental impacts on the RFP itself.”

    Whitfield argued that Georgia Power should at least disclose what portion of the roughly 9 GW of unidentified resources might consist of fossil gas–fired power plants built by the utility, as opposed to clean power, batteries, or resources built and owned by third-party developers.

    Grubb declined to provide that information. ​“We cannot speak about those because we’re still working on them,” he said.

    But Georgia Power is already working on at least one large expansion of fossil-fueled power. In March, the utility applied for state permits to build four gas-fired turbines with a combined generation capacity of about 2.9 GW at the site of the utility’s coal-fired Plant Bowen.

    Grubb conceded in the hearing that the utility sought those permits in preparation for possibly building the gas-fired units, which aren’t mentioned in Georgia Power’s IRP.

    “We’re not sure if we’ll need all four of those,” he said. ​“There’s other things that we’re looking at, but I can’t speak more than they are potential resources from that RFP, and that’s why we had to move forward” with filing the permits.

    Whitfield asked the Public Service Commission to require Georgia Power to provide more information on the projects being considered in its RFP, including details on fuel type, ownership, and size. Last week, in response to that request, Whitfield received the following document from the utility, which contains nothing but two columns of the word ​“redacted.”

    “It’s difficult to understand any justification for redacting this information,” said Bob Sherrier, a staff attorney at the Southern Environmental Law Center. ​“How can the public meaningfully engage with Georgia Power’s proposed data center plans without any insight into what’s coming?”

    Georgia Power spokesperson Jacob Hawkins told Canary Media in an April 18 email that the utility follows ​“established processes and legal requirements when submitting sensitive or proprietary information that, if made available broadly and publicly, could hurt our ability to negotiate and procure the best value and resources for our customers. Intervenors who sign confidentiality agreements as part of the process have access to much greater and detailed information.”

    “We would disagree in the strongest possible terms that we are not following all statutory requirements and state law across the board in these proceedings, period,” Hawkins wrote. 

    Regulatory blind spots

    Many states allow utilities to withhold details about the cost or type of resources in all-source RFPs to avoid undermining the competitive bidding process. But what’s uncommon about Georgia Power’s current case is just how much of its future will be dictated by this process.

    Georgia Power’s need for new generation has exploded in the past two years, driven largely by a flood of plans to build data centers in the region. The utility has tripled its decade-ahead electricity demand forecasts since 2022. That projected boom in demand has somewhat scrambled the standard processes for utility resource planning, Whitfield told Canary Media.

    In its last full-scale IRP in 2022, Georgia Power identified enough resources to cover its needs until 2029, she said. But it also identified an approximately 500 MW gap between demand and supply from 2029 to 2031, and agreed with regulators to launch the all-source RFP to fill it. That all-source RFP process is not subject to the same disclosure rules as an IRP, as it involves competitive bidding between the utility and third-party energy project developers.

    Regulators approved an interim IRP last year that allows Georgia Power to build 1.4 GW of fossil-fueled power plants and 500 MW of batteries, and to contract for nearly 1 GW more from other utilities’ coal- and gas-fired power plants, to relieve some of its nearer-term pressures.

    But the all-source RFP launched back in 2022 has remained Georgia Power’s main mechanism to get what it needs by 2031, Whitfield said. That’s despite the fact that it was initially meant to cover just 500 MW, a figure nearly 20 times smaller than the 9.5 GW it is now planning to fill via the all-source RFP process.

    This has created something of a regulatory shell game in which Georgia Power can contract for the vast majority of its future energy and capacity needs outside the purview of the standard IRP process, said Simon Mahan, executive director of the Southern Renewable Energy Association trade group.

    “Many organizations and companies focus exclusively on the IRP, while the ultimate decisions may occur in a totally separate docket, where fewer intervening parties are engaged,” he said.

    The battle over Georgia Power’s missing gigawatts comes as the utility has failed to bring as much renewable energy into its resource mix as it previously pledged to.

    The utility has about 3 GW of solar, helping to push Georgia into the top 10 states for solar growth. But it’s also been slow to contract with third-party owners of solar and battery projects to meet its power needs. Georgia Power’s 2025 IRP calls for an additional 3.5 GW of renewable energy by the end of 2030, but that plan partially just makes up for the utility’s cancellation of previous clean-power procurements, Mahan noted.

    Solar alone can’t meet Georgia Power’s capacity needs, which are driven by demand for electricity for heating in wintertime.

    But batteries that can store solar or general grid power could play a more significant role. Regulators approved Georgia Power to add 500 MW of battery storage in last year’s interim IRP, and its 2025 IRP calls for further expanding its energy storage capacity. Mahan noted that much of the solar power being proposed in the state will likely be paired with batteries to enhance its value to Georgia Power’s grid.

    Without more information on the contents of the all-source RFP, it’s nearly impossible for environmental groups, consumer advocates, and other stakeholders to know whether Georgia Power is properly weighing renewable alternatives to gas-fired power plants that the utility will build and own itself.

    The big picture on carbon and cost

    Georgia Power’s commitment to fossil gas and coal — which together made up nearly 60 percent of its capacity last year — is certainly a problem for the climate. The Sierra Club calculates that the generation mix laid out in Georgia Power’s proposed 2025 IRP would make the utility ​“one of the top greenhouse gas emitters in the U.S.”

    It could be a problem for utility customers, too, who have already seen rates rise significantly in recent years due to Georgia Power’s more than $30 billion expansion of its Vogtle nuclear power plant.

    Like most regulated utilities, Georgia Power earns a set rate of profit on investments in power plants, power grids, and other capital assets. It’s also required to allow third-party developers to compete with it to build solar and battery projects — a process that can yield lower costs for its customers but also lower rates of return for the utility.

    Regulators have a responsibility to closely monitor the utility’s process for choosing which resources end up winning to ensure those decisions aren’t maximizing Georgia Power’s profits at the expense of its customers, said Patty Durand, a consumer advocate and former Public Service Commission candidate. But she fears regulators will fail to challenge Georgia Power’s assertions on which resources will most cost-effectively meet its grid needs.

    “We need to keep stock of how many gigawatts of fossil fuel Georgia Power is building or keeping on the grid because of data centers,” she said. ​“That is a climate change disaster.”

    Durand has also challenged Georgia Power’s load-growth forecasts, noting that the utility has consistently overestimated future electricity demand across the past decade, helping it justify increased spending on profit-earning assets.

    “Are utility bills a kitchen-table issue? If they are, these guys are in trouble,” she said. ​“Data centers are about to make the bills we pay now into a joke.”

    Some of the tech giants playing a role in the data center expansion driving Georgia Power’s demand forecasts have similar concerns. Last year, Microsoft challenged the utility on how it models the value of clean energy resources as well as how it forecasts load growth.

    Georgia Power also faced pushback from the Clean Energy Buyers Association (CEBA), which represents companies like Amazon, Google, Meta, and Microsoft that are simultaneously planning major data center expansions and striving to decarbonize their energy supplies. In testimony before the Public Service Commission last year, CEBA warned that ​“some of the new load Georgia Power is forecasting may not materialize if Georgia Power increases the carbon intensity of its resource mix.”

    CEBA ended up supporting last year’s interim IRP on the condition that Georgia Power follow through with a promise to offer large industrial and commercial customers new options to bring more carbon-free resources onto the utility’s grid.

    Georgia Power’s 2025 IRP lays out a ​“customer-identified resource” proposal to meet its end of the bargain, said Katie Southworth, CEBA’s deputy director of market and policy innovation for the South and Southeast. In simple terms, the utility would allow big customers to work with third-party developers to build solar, batteries, and other carbon-free resources that they could use to power their data centers and other large facilities. That’s a fairly common practice in parts of the country operating under competitive energy markets — but not in Georgia and most of the U.S. Southeast, where utilities remain vertically integrated.

    However, the utility’s plan lacks transparency and certainty about how customer-proposed projects will be assessed and approved, and it limits the scale and scope of resources that big customers can bring to the table. Georgia Power also plans to delay implementation of that program, frustrating CEBA members eager to start searching for potential projects.

    Hawkins, the Georgia Power spokesperson, told Canary Media that the utility continues to ​“incorporate CEBA’s feedback into our program designs, while still ensuring that all Georgia Power customers are protected. Our proposed IRP portfolio of renewable procurements and programs represents a continuation of our steady and measured renewable growth that delivers benefits to all customers.”

    In the meantime, Southworth said, CEBA is encouraging Georgia Power customers looking for cleaner energy options to ​“get involved in the design of the all-source process. That gives us a chance to include other resources that could play a role.”

    That may be an option for qualified energy developers active in that competitive procurement. But it remains unclear if or how the Public Service Commission will push Georgia Power to open the hood on that process for consumer advocates and environmental groups that have been denied information thus far.

    “This is an exceptionally unusual time in the Georgia energy world for a million reasons, of which this is one. I think this is a hugely important issue,” Whitfield said. The investments being planned today are ​“going to transform our energy system,” and Georgia Power is conducting that work ​“without providing critical information about what that new system might look like.”

    But time is running short to order more transparency. Georgia Power plans to announce the winning bids for its all-source RFP in July, Whitfield said — the same month that state regulators expect to take their final vote on the IRP. 

    This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Is Georgia Power quietly planning a massive buildout of fossil gas? on May 3, 2025.

    This post was originally published on Grist.

  • Trump promised to help Big Oil. Its revenues plummeted

    This story is part of a Grist package examining how President Trump’s first 100 days in office have reshaped climate and environmental policy in the U.S.

    President Donald Trump came into office promising to “drill, baby, drill” and, on day one, signed an executive order aimed at “Unleashing American Energy.” On Friday, just over 100 days later, oil companies released their first quarterly earnings reports of Trump’s second term. They weren’t pretty.

    The two largest oil companies in the United States saw revenues tumble. Earnings at Exxon Mobil fell 6 percent compared to last year, to $7.7 billion. Chevron’s first-quarter income dropped more than a third, to $3.5 billion. “We are seeing significant downward pressure on prices and margins,” Darren Woods, chief executive of Exxon Mobil, said during a call with analysts on Friday. “In this environment, it is more important than ever to focus on what we can control.”

    This caps a three month stretch — and the first 100 days of an administration — that saw oil executives swooning at the possibility of a boon. But since President Trump has taken office, headwinds have mounted.

    The price of a barrel of oil has fallen from almost $80 to about $60 since his inauguration, sweeping new tariffs have made things like steel costlier, and economic uncertainty has made planning considerably more challenging. According to Baker Hughes, an oil field service provider, the number of drilling rigs in the nation’s largest oil field, the Permian Basin, have fallen about 3 percent over the last month.

    “There seems to be a lack of continuity in the policymaking that affects that industry,” said Sanjay Srinivasan, a professor of petroleum and natural gas engineering at Penn State University.

    On the one hand, President Trump declared a national energy emergency within hours of taking office and has been pushing for an expansion of fossil fuel extraction. The Department of Interior, for example, announced plans to open more tracts of public land to drilling, including in the Arctic. It also moved to shorten the permitting process for projects from as long as two years to 28 days. 

    “They are fast-tracking dangerous, disastrous projects that are going to put the health and safety of people, the water, and the environment at risk,” said Jasmine Vazin, Deputy Director of the Beyond Dirty Fuels Campaign at the Sierra Club, pointing to the Line 5 pipeline in Michigan as one example. “This is what [oil companies] wanted.”

    At the same time, the president has called for oil prices of $50 a barrel, which would decimate the industry. “At $50-per-barrel oil, we will see U.S. oil production start to decline immediately and likely significantly,” one anonymous executive responded in a Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas survey. “There cannot be ‘U.S. energy dominance’ and $50 per barrel oil; those two statements are contradictory.” Others reported already cutting future capital expenditures based on the administration’s ambitions. 

    Trump’s tariffs have also taken a toll on oil companies by raising the cost of the steel they rely on for wells and other equipment, as well as, likely slowing global demand for oil, which generally drops along with economic activity.  Foreign producers deciding to increase output, including an OPEC+ announcement last week to boost its supply by more than 400,000 barrels a day in June, has only compounded domestic pressures. 

    “I have never felt more uncertainty about our business in my entire 40-plus-year career,” said one executive in the Federal Reserve survey. Another added: “Tariff policy is impossible for us to predict and doesn’t have a clear goal. We want more stability.”

    Whether the Trump administration can bring that stability remains an open question. Even if it does, there’s no guarantee that American oil output — which was already at record levels before Trump took office  — can grow significantly, or that it will create more jobs. It’s also unclear if Trump cares. 

    “I’ll get those guys drilling,” he told supporters in Greenville, North Carolina, in November. “If they drill themselves out of business, I don’t give a damn.” 

    So far, that seems to be the trajectory. A Wall Street Journal analysis found that American oil-and-gas companies lost more than $280 billion in stock-market value between April 2, when Trump unveiled his tariff blitz, and Monday. 

    That drop outpaced that of every other major sector.

    This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Trump promised to help Big Oil. Its revenues plummeted on May 2, 2025.

    This post was originally published on Grist.

  • 100 days in, does Trump still ‘dig’ coal?

    This story is part of a Grist package examining how President Trump’s first 100 days in office have reshaped climate and environmental policy in the U.S.

    Jeffrey Willig doesn’t mine coal anymore. For nine years he worked underground, most recently for a company called Blackjewel, which laid off around 1,700 workers in June of 2019 without paying them. Robbed of their final paycheck, Willig and the others set up camp and blocked the company’s last trainload of “black gold” from leaving Harlan County, Kentucky, beginning what would be months of protest. They called on Democrats and Republicans alike for support, and received some, but ultimately were left disillusioned, spending years in court fighting for what they were owed. 

    Their plight came during a wave of layoffs that has rocked coal country for more than a decade. When Willig heard Democrats discuss mine closures and extoll the growth of clean energy jobs, it frustrated him. “Say they want to do solar panels. That’s great,” Willig said. “But why don’t [they] put those type of jobs in our area? They don’t do that. That’s the problem.”  

    Democratic party leaders and renewable energy advocates didn’t always seem to understand, he felt, how good a job mining could be. Willig earned $75,000 a year without a college degree, in a county with an annual per capita income not even one-third that. What’s more, it was fulfilling — hard work, and dangerous, but it came with unmatched camaraderie and pride in helping fuel the world. When those jobs were gone, he felt Democrats didn’t provide a clear answer to what would come after.

    “They didn’t replace those jobs,” Willig said. “I had guys that I worked with who were good people, and loved their family and everything, and they lost homes.” One friend took his own life, unable to see a way forward to provide for his family.

    Harlan County still has many active mines, but, like all of coal country, it has seen layoffs and bankruptcies cut the number of jobs by more than half since 2012. The reasons are complex, but, during his first 100 days in office, President Trump — who has promised to “unleash American energy” and “restore energy dominance” — has reprised a notion he first raised in 2016: Those jobs will come back if environmental and labor regulators simply get out of the way.

    Last month, the president appeared with more than two dozen men wearing reflective stripes and hard hats to sign an executive order titled Reinvigorating America’s Beautiful Clean Coal Industry.  “We’re bringing back an industry that was abandoned,” Trump said. “With us today are some of the amazing workers who will benefit from these policies.”

    If all of this sounds familiar, it’s because the president’s 2016 run made a star of the Appalachian coalfields. He made regular appearances there, promising to end the “war on coal” by reopening closed plants and reinvigorating the industry. The campaign, which preceded a swirl of national soul-searching that positioned the region, many argued too broadly, as “Trump Country,” featured rallies in West Virginia and Pennsylvania, where the candidate, met by signs declaring “Trump Digs Coal,” donned a hard hat and once pantomimed digging coal. 

    “You’re real people,” Trump said at one event. “You made this country.”

    President Trump surrounded himself with coal miners when he signed an executive order on April 8 declaring coal a critical mineral and calling for revitalization of an industry in decline.
    Andrew Thomas / Middle East Images via AFP / Getty Images

    Then, as now, the president was following an example set by politicians before him, said Lou Martin, a labor historian at Chatham University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Candidates on both sides of the aisle, from FDR and Carter to Nixon and Trump, have dressed the part to campaign in Appalachia, where, despite its dangers, mining coal provided a middle-class living to generations of families.

    “The coal miner has always been viewed as the epitome of hard work, a hardworking person who is noble and honest,” Martin said. Appalachia is a popular political backdrop because it is often seen as an epicenter of white rural poverty and “a recognizable world of suffering” for some voters. “Appalachia is seen as white in the national imagination,” he said, despite being home to a people from a diverse set of backgrounds for hundreds of years.   

    At the same time, Martin said, the Eastern coalfields have often been stereotyped as both out of step with modernity and left behind by progress. “When somebody pays homage to coal miners it’s like saying, ‘I see you and I care about you.’” 

    The order Trump signed on April 8 declares coal a “critical mineral,” a designation that requires a host of federal agencies, including the energy, treasury, and interior departments, to take steps to support the industry and eliminate regulations that hinder domestic production. Many of those gathered around Trump applauded the move, which comes even as the administration has taken steps to undermine mine safety and protection from black lung disease.

    But little about the ceremony was representative of the working-class miners Trump’s campaigns have venerated, said Erin Bates, communications officer for the United Mine Workers of America. “Not a single one of those were union miners and most of them were management,” she said, men more likely wear sharp button-downs than hard hats and go to bed without having to shower first.

    Bates wants to see mines remain open and miners remain at work, but she doubts the Trump administration can overcome the trends driving the sector’s downfall. Industry experts predicted in 2017 that the market forces sidelining coal were too strong and the its resurgence is unlikely, and so far they’ve been correct. The number of people working the nation’s coal mines has steadily declined from 89,000 or so in 2012 to about 41,300 today. Production fell 31 percent during Trump’s first term, and has continued that slide. 

    “He hasn’t spoken about coal miners quite as much as he did in 2016,” Bates said of the president. “And I think that’s because he wasn’t able to follow through on a lot of things.”

    The reason for that is simple: Demand has slowed as renewable energy and, to a larger extent, natural gas have grown cheaper, making coal an increasingly expensive proposition — even as the cost of maintaining the power plants that use has climbed. Such facilities provide 88 percent of the electricity in West Virginia, and the longer they run, the more residents will pay for energy, West Virginia Public Broadcasting reported. That’s got some ratepayers turning against the fossil fuel.

    Utilities like Appalachian Power have continued to raise rates to keep up with repair costs. Others, like the Tennessee Valley Authority, are decommissioning aging and expensive coal-fired plants and turning to natural gas. Coal-powered electricity generation steadily declined during the first Trump administration, and continues apace. A recent report from the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis argued very few idled coal plants could be cheaply re-started, given high maintenance costs and the decreasing viability of coal power.

    Given the domestic decline in consumption, many U.S. producers rely upon exports to countries like China — 14 percent of the nation’s coal went abroad in 2022 — but the trade war stemming from Trump’s tariffs threatens that lifeline.

    Jeffrey Willig has long since left the coalfields for a manufacturing job. But he watches with a combination of frustration and hope as Democrats and Republicans alike promise to restore the fortunes of those who still work the mines.
    Scott Olson / Getty Images

    Trump still enjoys broad support throughout eastern coalfields. “I think that he meant every word, he wanted to make the country more energy efficient. The guys that I worked with had high hopes,” Willig said, adding that he felt four years wasn’t enough time to enact real change.  

    Cathy Davis Estep, a retired teacher and the daughter of a coal miner who lives in Harlan County, remains hopeful that Trump will revitalize the industry. She takes note, however, that the administration has targeted at least 33 Mine Safety and Health Administration offices, including the Harlan County location, for closure. This comes after years of staff reductions and budget cuts to the agency had already wrung it of much of its power. Miners and their advocates fear the closures will diminish an agency that’s improved safety over the past 50 years or so despite its shortcomings and could play a vital role protecting them as the Trump administration promotes coal and the nation scrambles to produce lithium and other metals.

    Vonda Robinson is vice president of the Black Lung Association and feels she has a handle on what miners need. Her husband dug coal until he contracted the disease, which is caused by chronic exposure to silica dust, in his 40s. Now 58, he is awaiting a double lung transplant. Many others are awaiting diagnosis and treatment, but Trump administration policies have stymied them. “We’re gonna have coal, we’re gonna dig baby dig, but what upsets me is there’s not one thing about safety,” she said. “If we do not take care of our coal miners, we’re not gonna have a coal industry.” 

    Miners’ health programs are shuttering, with immediate impacts, said Scott Laney, a National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, or NiOSH, epidemiologist. His staff was put on leave last month and expects to be fired in June. His research laid the groundwork for the federal silica rule, which limits exposure to the toxic dust. The rule was adopted last year, but has been placed on hold pending a legal challenge by the National Sand, Gravel, and Stone Association, and NiOSH cuts have held up enforcement regardless.

    Laney’s research also supported the Coal Workers Health Surveillance Program, which provided free black lung screenings throughout Appalachia. “We currently are unable to accept X-rays from clinics for these miners, we’re unable to go out in the field,” he said. Nor can the program provide the documentation essential to allowing workers diagnosed with the disease to transfer to roles with less exposure to silica, as required by law.

    “As we potentially increase coal production in the United States, we’re in the midst of the worst outbreak of black lung that we’ve seen in the last 50 years and we’re shutting down the health and safety programs to protect these miners who may be entering the industry for for the first time,” Laney said. “The protections that were granted to their fathers and their fathers’ fathers will not be afforded to them.” 

    Even as Trump promises to revitalize an industry facing inevitable decline, its future remains uncertain. But Willig won’t be a part of it. He’s long since left the coalfields for a manufacturing job in Louisville, Kentucky. But he watches with a combination of frustration and hope as Democrats and Republicans alike promise to restore the fortunes of those who, like him, once enjoyed the middle class life that working underground once provided. 

    This story was originally published by Grist with the headline 100 days in, does Trump still ‘dig’ coal? on May 1, 2025.

  • Tony Blair’s climate crisis views ‘absolutely aligned’ with government policy, Starmer says – as it happened

    This blog is now closed, you can read more on this story here

    PMQs is starting soon.

    Here is the list of MPs down to ask a question.

    Continue reading…

    This post was originally published on Human rights | The Guardian.

  • Farmers are making bank harvesting a new crop: Solar energy

    Around the world, farmers are retooling their land to harvest the hottest new commodity: sunlight. As the price of renewable energy technology has plummeted and water has gotten more scarce, growers are fallowing acreage and installing solar panels. Some are even growing crops beneath them, which is great for plants stressed by too many rays. Still others are letting that shaded land go wild, providing habitat for pollinators and fodder for grazing livestock.

    According to a new study, this practice of agrisolar has been quite lucrative for farmers in California’s Central Valley over the last 25 years — and for the environment. Researchers looked at producers who had idled land and installed solar, using the electricity to run equipment like water pumps and selling the excess power to utilities. 

    On average, that energy savings and revenue added up to $124,000 per hectare (about 2.5 acres) each year, 25 times the value of using the land to grow crops. Collectively, the juice generated in the Central Valley could power around 500,000 households while saving enough water to hydrate 27 million people annually. “If a farmer owns 10 acres of land, and they choose to convert one or two acres to a solar array, that could produce enough income for them to feel security for their whole operation,” said Jake Stid, a renewable energy landscape scientist at Michigan State University and lead author of the paper, published in the journal Nature Sustainability. 

    The Central Valley is among the most productive agricultural regions in the world: It makes up just 1 percent of all farmland acreage in the United States, yet generates a third of the nation’s fruits and vegetables. But it’s also extremely water-stressed as California whiplashes between years of significant rainfall and drought. To irrigate all those crops, farmers have drawn so much groundwater that aquifers collapse like empty water bottles, making the earth itself sink by many feet.

    Farmers can’t make their crops less thirsty, so many have been converting some of their acreage to solar. The Central Valley is ideal for this, being mostly flat and very sunny, hence the agricultural productivity. At the same time, farmers have been getting good rates for the electricity that they offset and that they send back to the grid. 

    Now, though, California has adopted standards that reduce those rates by 75 percent on average. For a farmer investing in panels, the investment looks less enticing. “The algebra or calculus — or whatever math discipline you want to reference — it just doesn’t work out the same way,” said Karen Norene Mills, vice president of legal advocacy at the California Farm Bureau, which promotes the state’s agricultural community. 

    Also, the study found that by fallowing land for solar panels, food production in the Central Valley dropped by enough calories to feed 86,000 people a year. But, Stid said, markets can adjust, as crops are grown elsewhere to make up the deficit. By tapping the sun instead, Stid added, growers can simultaneously help California reach its goals of deploying renewable and reducing groundwater usage. 

    The tension, though, is meeting those objectives while still producing incredible quantities of food. “That is always our concern about some of these pressures,” Mills said.

    But this isn’t an either-or proposition: Many farmers are finding ways to grow some crops, like leafy greens and berries, under the panels. The shade reduces evaporation from the soil, allowing growers to water less often. In turn, a wetted landscape cools the panels, which improves their efficiency. “This is the compromise that’s going to allow for both energy independence and food security,” said horticulturalist Jennifer Bousselot, who studies agrisolar at Colorado State University but wasn’t involved in the new study. 

    Farmers are also turning livestock loose to graze under their panels. Their droppings fertilize the soil, leading to more plant growth and more flowers that support native pollinators. “The grass, it’s so much more lush under the panels, it’s amazing,” said Ryan Romack, founder of Virginia-based AgriSolar Ranch, which provides grazing services. “Especially when the sheep have been on site long-term, you can really see the added benefits of the manure load.”

    Then, if a farmer decides not to replace the solar panels at the end of their lifespan — usually around 25 or 30 years — the soil will be refreshed with nutrients and ready to grow more crops. Even if a grower simply lets them sit for decades without any management, the fallowing can restore the soil’s health. “We really see solar as a collective landscape,” Stid said, “that can be sited, managed, and designed in a way to benefit both people and the planet and ecosystems as well.”

    This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Farmers are making bank harvesting a new crop: Solar energy on Apr 30, 2025.

    This post was originally published on Grist.

  • China Helps Cuba Fight Blackouts, Strengthen Power Grid

    Cuba may slowly ease its crippling blackouts and strengthen the electricity grid as it begins building seven solar parks with the first batch of equipment from China.

    The Chinese aid helps Cuba’s plan to build 92 solar installations by 2028, adding about 2,000 megawatts to the island’s power grid and help reduce dependence on fossil fuel imports. Once completed, the project would significantly boost Cuba’s strained power system, which currently has a capacity of 7,264 MW.

    Installation work is set to begin soon in Artemisa, about 50 kilometers west of Havana, where the equipment arrived late last month. Additional solar parks are planned for the provinces of Pinar del Rio, Las Tunas, Holguin, Granma and Guantanamo.

    The post China Helps Cuba Fight Blackouts, Strengthen Power Grid appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.