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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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How to bring a geothermal well back from the dead

This story was originally published by Wired and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. Geothermal company Zanskar bought a New Mexico power plant in 2024 that appeared from the outside to be failing. The shallow wells had been rapidly losing heat, and the plant was having trouble…
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Illinois Solar for All is, at last, taking off

Any time, day or night, parents experiencing homelessness, domestic violence, or other emergencies can drop their young kids off at the Crisis Nursery in Urbana, Illinois, and know they’ll be safe and cared for. Funding is a constant challenge for the 45-year-old nonprofit organization. But it was able to create a…
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Virginia lays groundwork to combine more solar with farming

As the world’s data center capital, Virginia faces a surge in energy demand that could spike power costs and lead to more polluting fossil fuel plants. At the same time, the state is seeing its farmland disappear at one of the fastest rates in the United States. The two problems may seem unrelated, but Old Dominion…
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