See more from Canary Media’s ​“Chart of the Week” column . Batteries are taking center stage in the energy world. Battery deployment, both to power electric vehicles and to store electricity for the grid, has skyrocketed in recent years. Last year, more than 1.5 terawatt-hours of batteries were placed into service…

This analysis and news roundup come from the Canary Media Weekly newsletter. Sign up to get it every Friday. Solar is beating coal in China. Sorta. But also not at all. Let me explain. An eye-popping new chart made the rounds this week. It shows a line representing solar energy in China rising improbably over…

This analysis and news roundup come from the Canary Media Weekly newsletter. Sign up to get it every Friday. Glass half-empty or glass half-full? The classic question is now gripping the policy wonks who are trying to measure the damage President Donald Trump has inflicted on the U.S. energy transition — and to…

See more from Canary Media’s ​“Chart of the Week” column . Developers are planning to build an enormous amount of natural gas-fired power plants in the U.S., fueled in large part by the AI boom. The expansion is a serious threat to the nation’s decarbonization efforts — but because so much gas development remains…

A thousand solar roofs per week. That was the pace Elon Musk predicted Tesla would install its electricity-generating roof tiles in 2020, more than three years after he unveiled the product to great fanfare on the set of the TV show Desperate Housewives. That estimate fell flat. Tesla managed to install a total of…

See more from Canary Media’s ​“Chart of the Week” column . It’s a tough time to build renewable energy in the U.S. In 2026 alone, the Trump administration has phased out tax credits , frozen clean-energy permitting , and issued tariffs certain to raise the cost of solar — while continuing to take lazy and…

See more from Canary Media’s ​“Chart of the Week” column . Last fall, as generous federal incentives for consumer cleantech were set to expire, people raced to lock in good deals on EVs and rooftop solar . Then, this year, sales cratered. But home batteries bucked the trend. Federal tax credits for residential…

The U.S. Department of Defense has for months refused to conduct routine military evaluations of proposed onshore wind farms, creating a de facto moratorium on the clean energy source at a time of exploding electricity demand. On Thursday, a federal judge appointed by President Donald Trump ordered the agency to…

See more from Canary Media’s ​“Chart of the Week” column . While the Trump administration is busy pointing out that the sun doesn’t shine at night , solar is breaking records around the world, including in sunny California. Solar panels produced 51% of California’s electricity in May, the first time the clean…

Yesterday, the Department of Energy took to social media to try and make a scandal out of a well-known fact: Solar panels do not generate power at night. It’s an old and lazy swipe that critics of renewable energy love to take, even though the people who operate our power grids know that this is the case and plan…

This article is part of our ​“Chart of the Week” series . Europe has had a sunny start to its summer. Across both May and June, solar was the European Union’s top source of electricity — and provided a record-high 25% of the region’s power last month, per new data from think tank Ember . Several countries,…

A coalition of 18 states and Washington, D.C., has moved to join an industry lawsuit challenging the Department of Defense’s freeze on onshore wind projects in America. It’s the latest in a nearly yearlong saga during which the Trump administration has obstructed more than 155 land-based wind projects across the…

This article is part of our ​“Chart of the Week” series . The global nuclear energy industry has been muted since 2011, when the Fukushima Daiichi disaster unfolded in Japan. Some new reactors have been built — especially in China — but a lot of old nuclear power plants have been retired as well. That means…

This article is part of our ​“Chart of the Week” series . President Donald Trump’s attacks on clean energy haven’t spelled disaster for the energy transition — but they have definitely hurt job prospects for Americans. Between January 2025, when Trump took office for his second term, and May 2026, a total of 216…

This article is part of our ​“Chart of the Week” series . Data centers use more electricity in the U.S. than in any other country — China included. In 2025, nearly 40% of all power demand from data centers came from facilities based in the U.S., according to this year's Statistical Review of World Energy from the…

This analysis and news roundup come from the Canary Media Weekly newsletter. Sign up to get it every Friday. One year ago, President Donald Trump got his Fourth-of-July wish. Republicans rammed a massive tax and spending bill through Congress before his preferred July 4 deadline, allowing Trump to sign it into law…

This article is part of our ​“Chart of the Week” series . Summer is officially here — and more Americans than ever are cooling their homes with heat pumps. A decade ago, two conventional air-conditioning systems were sold for every one heat pump. Now, heat pumps are on the verge of outselling standard ACs. In…

This article is part of our ​“Chart of the Week” series . With solar panels getting cheaper each year and utility bills soaring, you might expect rooftop solar to be booming in the U.S. That’s not the case. Instead, thanks in large part to the Trump administration’s revocation of federal tax incentives,…

This analysis and news roundup come from the Canary Media Weekly newsletter. Sign up to get it every Friday. The major players in AI want energy far faster than utilities can provide it — and that’s prompting them to explore some alternative approaches to powering data centers, ranging from the conventional to the…

This article is part of our ​“Chart of the Week” series . The U.S. just hit a big milestone: It got more power from solar panels than from coal plants in May. It’s the first time that has ever happened across an entire month, and all the more notable given the Trump administration’s all-out push to revive the…