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Why Illinois has struggled to turn old coal sites into solar farms

Illinois had big plans to turn a bunch of old coal plant sites into solar and battery farms. But the program has turned out to be kind of a bust. The state created its Coal to Solar and Energy Storage Initiative five years ago, hoping it would speed clean energy deployment by making use of the grid infrastructure…
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In North Carolina, rooftop solar is alive and well despite headwinds

Stew Miller, who launched his North Carolina rooftop solar company in the 2000s, says there’s “a lot of negativity” in his industry right now — and it’s easy to see why. A year ago, Republicans passed the One Big Beautiful Bill Act eliminating the 30% federal tax credit for households who buy rooftop panels. That…
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Trump launched big new solar tariffs. Here's what it means.

A far-reaching new tariff on solar imports promises to both raise the cost of installing the clean energy source and strengthen efforts to reshore solar manufacturing. The White House announced the new tariffs Thursday on imported polysilicon and related products, including silicon-based solar panels and their…
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Can Ford’s affordable new electric truck hit the sweet spot?

This analysis and news roundup come from the Canary Media Weekly newsletter. Sign up to get it every Friday. Ford’s first all-electric pickup truck didn’t exactly fly off the lot. The automaker is hoping a lower-cost model will fare better. On Thursday, the automaker rolled out a first look at its forthcoming…
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The Pentagon's wind farm blockade is over — for now

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…
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Nuclear startup Oklo splits its first atoms in test reactor

Oklo , a publicly traded small-modular-reactor firm backed by OpenAI chief Sam Altman, has become one of the highest-profile companies working on next-generation nuclear energy technologies. Two years ago, it debuted on the stock market and became retail investors’ go-to for betting on America’s atomic renaissance. …
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The Missing Link to VPP Success? Customer Knowledge.

Signs of the momentum behind virtual power plants (VPPs) are everywhere. States including New Jersey, Virginia, and Illinois are advancing legislation and regulations designed to accelerate VPP adoption, hoping to seize the potential of aggregated and managed distributed energy resources (DERs) to simultaneously meet…
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PJM’s big new data center plan: Make the states figure it out

PJM Interconnection, the biggest grid operator in the U.S., has finally settled on a plan to prevent data centers from causing other customers’ utility bills to soar further in its 13-state territory. That plan relies heavily on states themselves, and the utilities they regulate, to force data centers to secure…
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Base Power raises $1B to get big batteries into more homes

Home battery startup Base Power seems constitutionally incapable of standing still. After raising $1 billion last October, the Texas company has raised another $1 billion, and upped its valuation from $4 billion to $13 billion. The latest investment, led by Ribbit, Addition, Valor Equity Partners, and…
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Microreactor startup Valar Atomics raises $1B

Valar Atomics, the three-year-old microreactor developer that has a forged a close relationship with the Trump administration, has raised $1 billion in its Series B funding round as investors increasingly bet that the White House’s overhaul of nuclear regulations will clear the way for the country’s first big atomic…
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Data centers take center stage in Wisconsin governor’s race

A year ago, most Wisconsin residents thought little about data centers, according to local leaders and journalists. But today, the computing facilities — and where they get their energy — are a key issue in the hotly contested Aug. 11 Democratic primary for Wisconsin governor. At a lively town hall last week in…
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Massachusetts embraces backyard homes as housing and climate solution

When Marsha Gleason and her husband decided it was time to downsize from the 2,000-square-foot bungalow where they’d lived for the past 40 years, they didn’t head to Florida or research local retirement communities. Instead, they looked to their own backyard. The pair sold their house in Northborough, Massachusetts,…
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