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Base Power, the Texas startup designing and installing very large home batteries for close to free, just pulled in an additional $200 million to fund its growth.
Silicon Valley heavyweight Andreessen Horowitz co-led the Series B with Addition, Lightspeed Venture Partners, and Valor Equity Partners. They were joined by previous investors including Thrive Capital, Altimeter, Terrain, and Trust Ventures.
“It will fuel the next phase of growth,” Base Power co-founder and CEO Zach Dell told Canary Media. Besides ramping up installations in the company’s home market of Texas, that growth will include breaking ground on a domestic factory to manufacture home battery systems and busting out of Texas to sell in other states.
The sizable investment delivers a major vote of confidence in Base Power’s approach to a market that’s been tough for American companies to crack in a scalable way: connected, distributed energy. Base Power equips households with batteries for backup during outages, as long as they agree to buy power from the company and let it dispatch the batteries into Texas’ competitive energy markets managed by the Electric Reliability Council of Texas, or ERCOT. When all the pieces come together, this model gives homeowners cheaper, more reliable power while making the overall electricity system more cost-effective and stable, not to mention cleaner.
It’s a beloved concept in clean energy circles, promising to decarbonize the grid while skipping the delays and expenses associated with upgrading the macro electricity system. But the distributed-energy vision for batteries hasn’t minted many standout successes for venture investors.
Each of the 50 states regulates the power sector differently. In some states, like Texas, companies can aggregate small-scale batteries and earn money by bidding them into power markets; other states require such activities to run through a monopoly utility, which may or may not be interested in disrupting its own business. Base Power will need to adapt its strategy to grow steadily nationwide, but the company is already testing a new structure for working with legacy utilities.
It’s a turbulent time for cleantech investment generally, but Base Power raised its new financing from a group of VCs that aren’t primarily focused on climate or clean energy as a vertical. Dell and co. made that happen by showing rapid customer adoption.
“Often you see projections change, and they’ve been very consistent about doing what they say they’re going to do,” said Willem Van Lancker, partner at early-stage investment firm Terrain. Terrain made its first investment in Base Power’s seed round and is one of several previous investors who doubled down in the latest round. “The people that have been along for the journey since the beginning have witnessed the execution,” he added.
Base Power incorporated in June 2023 and launched its commercial product in May 2024. Since then, Dell said, the staff has grown to 100 people serving thousands of customers and earning millions of dollars in revenue. In-house teams are installing 20 home battery systems per day, which added up to 10 megawatt-hours installed just last month, a number Dell expects to exceed in April.
A typical customer gets either 25 or 50 kilowatt-hours of storage installed for just a few hundred dollars up-front and a minimum three-year commitment to buy retail power from Base. Those are significantly bigger batteries than the norm for residential storage.
Between the large battery design and the rapid pace of customer-driven installations, this decentralized battery fleet is starting to add up. Indeed, Dell expects to hit 100 megawatt-hours installed by mid-summer, equivalent to one of the larger utility-scale batteries operating in ERCOT. (Some go up to a few hundred megawatt-hours.)
But even in regulation-light Texas, grid-scale batteries take several years to develop, permit, and install, whereas efficient home batteries can reach customers in a matter of weeks. By this summer, Dell said Base Power will be installing more megawatt-hours per month in ERCOT than any other developer of large or small batteries, though he did not share a specific target rate.
This is, admittedly, a tricky metric to standardize across scales of battery project. For comparison, utility-scale developer esVolta is bringing 980 megawatt-hours online this year in Texas across three projects. But factoring in time spent on permits, land acquisition, and interconnection queues lowers the effective rate of megawatt-hours added per month of effort on those projects.
Just a few years ago, $200 million would have been a record size for an equity round in the stationary-energy-storage sector. In 2019, for instance, unorthodox Energy Vault, which proposed storing power by stacking blocks with towering six-armed cranes, pulled in $110 million for its Series B, the largest such investment in a grid-storage venture at the time.
Others have surpassed that since then, like Form Energy’s $450 million Series E for a novel iron-based battery. But those investments went to large-scale storage technology plays, not small-scale, aggregated storage models, which typically draw more modest sums from wonky climatetech specialists.
Dell declined to dwell too much on the robust quantity of new cash in hand.
“Fundraising is the ability to keep executing,” Dell said. “The things we should celebrate are customers and revenue and products.”
Base Power will use some of its new funds to accelerate development of its own battery factory in Texas, Dell noted. The company is now searching for a site, with a focus on the Austin area, and could break ground by the end of the year.
Currently, Base Power uses contract manufacturers to turn its residential battery designs into a physical product; some but not all of the system is assembled in China.
That makes Base Power’s supply chain vulnerable to President Donald Trump’s barrage of new tariffs, which raise the cost of imports from longstanding trading partners and geopolitical adversaries alike. The storage industry is still figuring out the damage from these tariffs; even domestic battery-cell production depends on imports for precursor materials, but some critical minerals are exempt from the latest tariffs.
Dell said that the push for domestic manufacturing was always part of the plan, though, given Base Power’s commitment to “compounding cost advantage through vertical integration.”
“Doing it ourselves we can take more cost out of the system,” Dell explained. He envisions the factory producing thousands of units per week.
Then there’s the matter of geographical expansion.
“They can build a very, very large business just inside Texas,” Van Lancker said. “That being said, the plans will allow them to expand outside of Texas.”
Base Power will need to work with utilities to operate in areas that lack the retail choice and open competitive markets that Texas enjoys. Where appropriate, Base will partner with regulated utilities and sell them “capacity as a service.” In other words, Base Power would install its batteries in homes, but instead of playing the markets itself with that capacity, the startup can hand the keys to a utility to help meet growing demand for power at peak hours, or other grid needs.
The startup rolled out this model in March with Bandera Electric Cooperative, a 29,000-member utility in Texas Hill Country. (A fraction of Texans still get their power from vertically integrated cooperative or municipal utilities.) Bandera Electric offers its customer-owners this backup power for a monthly subscription with no up-front cost; the cooperative dispatches the batteries based on its own strategy — and pays Base Power for that ability.
The Environmental Protection Agency revoked an essential Clean Air Act permit last month from Atlantic Shores, an offshore wind development slated to be built off the New Jersey coast. One of the main justifications was President Donald Trump’s January executive order calling for a halt and reexamination of the fledgling offshore wind industry.
The move suggests the agency, which has historically played a relatively small role in wind development, may be joining Trump’s assault on a renewable sector that many blue states are counting on to slash their planet-warming emissions and shore up grid reliability.
Lee Zeldin, one of President Trump’s first allies in Congress, now heads the EPA. Anti-wind groups have speculated in emails with Canary Media that Zeldin is sympathetic to their cause. One group has already submitted a “copycat” petition in hopes of convincing the agency to yank the same type of permit from Vineyard Wind in Massachusetts, a project expected to come online this year.
Permits are now the golden tickets of offshore wind.
Depending on the location and size of the project, an offshore wind farm needs to secure between eight and 10 federal permits before the first turbine can be built.
If you don’t already have them, you’re effectively locked out of building a wind farm over the next several years given Trump’s directive to freeze new permitting. Only nine projects in the U.S. — including Atlantic Shores — had all the necessary permits in hand when Trump took office again in January. But as indicated by the case of Atlantic Shores, even having all the paperwork in order may not be enough to keep projects from being crippled by the Trump administration’s assault on wind.
Most of the necessary federal permits are examined and issued by the Interior Department. But only the EPA or one of its regional delegates can give out the Clean Air Act permits that are required to ensure wind companies minimize air pollution during construction and operation.
The EPA appeals board has a history of pulling these permits from energy or industrial projects when appropriate, according to the letter of the Clean Air Act. Presidential orders are not typically a meaningful factor.
“It’s not unprecedented,” said Stan Meiburg, a former acting deputy administrator of the EPA, referring to the use of a presidential order in this kind of agency decision. “But it still seems unusual that you would cite it that heavily in a case.”
The decision comes as Zeldin moves to dramatically reshape the agency.
He has floated plans to cut 65% of its budget, is reportedly considering slashing 10% of its workforce, and has aggressively attempted to claw back $20 billion of funds Congress had already approved for clean energy projects. In early March, he released an extensive plan that aims to eliminate dozens of bedrock environmental regulations. The goal, he said in the statement, is to reorient the EPA around making it “more affordable to purchase a car, heat homes, and operate a business.”
It’s a remarkable shift not only for the agency but for Zeldin himself, who began his political career as a moderate blue state Republican before morphing into what The New York Times described in a recent profile as the cabinet’s “MAGA warrior.” As a congressman, he supported offshore wind and other renewable projects in his home state of New York.
That transformation was on display in his confirmation hearing held in January.
“When asked about wind power, he spouted fossil fuel–funded talking points about harms to marine life,” said Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, a Democrat from Rhode Island, at a meeting of the U.S. Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works to vote on Zeldin’s confirmation.
The EPA’s appeals board — which has a decades-long track record of independence — could now theoretically become caught up in Zeldin’s crusade against clean energy, too, argued Meiburg.
In 1992, the Environmental Appeals Board was formed as “an impartial appellate tribunal” to resolve regulatory disputes. The four-judge panel is staffed by long-time EPA attorneys who are senior career officials — not political appointees. In the agency’s early years, disputes were settled by the administrator directly, but the workload became overwhelming. In the three decades that followed its establishment, the board evolved from an extension of the administrator’s office to an independent body untethered from politics. According to a 2017 EPA document, unless a case requires another agency to weigh in, the board’s decisions “cannot be appealed to the EPA Administrator.” In other words, the board has the final say.
“The value of the Environmental Appeals Board as an institution has derived from the fact that they are seen as independent,” said Meiburg, who now serves as executive director of Wake Forest University’s Andrew Sabin Family Center for Environment and Sustainability. “And they want to make sure to preserve that independence and integrity because that’s the basis of some of their credibility.”
Zeldin could reverse course, exerting more political pressure on the board or firing its judges.
“The Environmental Appeals Board is independent of all EPA components outside the immediate office of the Office of the Administrator,” said an EPA spokesperson via email. “It is an impartial appellate tribunal established by regulation to hear administrative appeals under the major environmental statutes that EPA administers.”
On March 14, Environmental Appeals Board Judge Mary Kay Lynch ruled to “remand,” as EPA calls it, a Clean Air Act permit issued last September to Atlantic Shores. Companies can appeal the board’s remand decisions in federal court but, according to Meiburg, most of those appeals fail. Overall, less than 1% of the board’s final decisions have been reversed.
EPA officials working in the Region 2 office in the Northeast had recommended in February a reexamination of the permit, in light of Trump’s anti-wind order and in response to a formal petition, filed in October, from a local anti-wind group called Save Long Beach Island. Along with other concerns, the group had raised questions about the impact on wildlife at a nearby refuge.
Atlantic Shores contested the decision, which moved the dispute to the EAB judges’ desk.
The project’s lawyers argued that Trump’s anti-wind order — the EAB’s main justification for pulling the permit — should not be retroactively applied to a permit that was issued in September, well before his election.
But Judge Lynch wrote in her motion that the board has “broad discretion” in pulling permits, handing a win to the EPA officials and another blow to Atlantic Shores. The judges offered no opinion on the actual merits of the original petition about nearby wildlife, according to Meiburg.
The revoked permit came after the project was already faltering in the face of rising costs from inflation and waning support from the state’s lame-duck governor. Shell, one of the project’s partners, pulled out in January.
“Atlantic Shores is disappointed by the EPA’s decision to pull back its fully executed permit as regulatory certainty is critical to deploying major energy projects,” Atlantic Shores spokesperson Terence Kelly wrote in a statement.
Lawyers working in the environmental field expressed similar concerns.
“My first reaction was disappointment — these are projects that had gone through extensive review by the agency. It seems to be invoking a tangential issue here,” said Kate Sinding Daly of the Conservation Law Foundation, a nonprofit that has brought numerous cases to the agency’s appeals board.
She explained that Atlantic Shores’ air permit application will now be reexamined. Most revoked Clean Air Act permits are eventually reissued, sometimes with modifications, but it’s unclear what will happen with Zeldin at the helm given Trump’s order to halt permitting activity.
Sinding Daly also raised concern about the “copycat” petition submitted last week by Nantucket-based group ACK for Whales to challenge Vineyard Wind’s Clean Air Act permit.
That petition argues that the EPA did not properly anticipate emissions from wind turbine malfunctions, such as the Vineyard Wind blade accident, which left the developer with almost a year of extra at-sea work and thus created extra emissions from the ships working on the project. The wind farm is slated to come online later this year, feeding renewable energy from near Nantucket Sound to the state’s energy grid.
“We’re hopeful that our petition to EPA will be carefully reviewed as we believe our concerns are valid,” said Amy DiSibio, a member of ACK for Whales, in an email.
Sinding Daly said the group’s petition addresses a more narrow provision in the law and pointed out that it’s been submitted years after the original air permit was issued, instead of just weeks, like with Atlantic Shores. She doubts that the Massachusetts petition will be successful. But when asked about potential “copycat” Clean Air Act petitions elsewhere, directed at other U.S. wind projects, she said she still considers them a “threat.”
Historically, she said, the agency has focused on protecting public health and the environment. But the remit is different now under Zeldin — and the EPA has just enough permitting authority over large infrastructure projects to slow down turbine installations in line with the Trump 2.0 mandate.
Want to know why EV chargers can be so hard to connect to crowded urban power grids? Just look to San Francisco’s latest public charging station, opened by startup Revel last week.
At first glance, the station, Revel’s first foray outside of its home city of New York, doesn’t seem like it should be that tricky for Northern California utility Pacific Gas & Electric to connect. It’s a fairly small parking lot in the city’s Mission District, right next to a major freeway, featuring a fairly standard number of high-speed chargers — 12 — that are available 24/7.
But when all those chargers are used at once, the total demand on the grid adds up to 1.3 megawatts, Neema Yazdi, a strategic analyst on PG&E’s clean energy transportation team, said at the ribbon-cutting event last week. That’s equivalent to roughly one-quarter of the power demand of the city’s tallest building, the 1.4-million-square-foot, 61-story Salesforce Tower.
“That’s a big feat for a utility to energize,” he said — “and to do something like that is impossible without the close collaboration of our customers.”
More such challenges and collaborations are on the way. Revel plans to start construction this year on seven more Bay Area sites with a total of 125 fast-charging plugs. It’s an ambitious pace in a state with notoriously long wait times to bring EV charging hubs online.
One way Revel hopes to achieve this plan is by entering two of its upcoming stations into a new PG&E program to fast-track EV charging hubs. On one condition, that is: Station operators have to be willing to reduce the power that chargers can deliver at the times when PG&E’s grid can’t handle the maximum draw. PG&E and Revel will pursue this “flexible service connection” approach at one site in the city of Oakland and another near San Francisco International Airport.
Under standard utility practice, customers can’t connect if their maximum power draw threatens to overtax the grid, even if only during a handful of hours per year when grid demand peaks. That’s despite the fact that many EV charging sites are highly unlikely to have enough vehicles charging at once to reach that limit — and that they can theoretically dial back their power use during those critical hours.
Flexible service turns that theoretical capability into an operational reality. The process is straightforward: PG&E forecasts its grid needs and, a day ahead of time, sends customers instructions for when they need to curtail power use.
Both customers and utility win out, Yazdi said. Customers can “connect quickly and more seamlessly” and charge at full capacity most of the time, as they wait for PG&E to complete grid upgrades that will eventually remove the constraints they face during peak hours.
PG&E, meanwhile, gets to expand EV charging more quickly than it would otherwise be able to. That’s not just good for meeting the state’s carbon-cutting goals but for reducing rates for customers at large. That’s because the program helps reduce immediate pressure on PG&E to make grid upgrades, which are a primary driver of rising electricity rates in its territory, while also quickly expanding its electricity sales.
“Only a few utilities in the United States are doing this nowadays,” Yazdi said. “This is really forward-thinking, and we’re really excited about it.”
So are the authors of a February Environmental Defense Fund report that highlights PG&E’s leading position among U.S. utilities on the flexible connection front. Southern California Edison is pursuing a similar pilot project, the report notes, and utilities and regulators in Illinois and Colorado are exploring approaches to flexible interconnection as well.
Finding ways for EV charging stations to connect more rapidly provides “both economic benefits to the fleet that can put its newly acquired vehicles and chargers to work, and societal benefits where these electric trucks and buses are displacing fossil fuel vehicles earlier than otherwise possible,” the report’s authors wrote.
It took PG&E more than a year to establish, test, and gain confidence in the underlying technology needed to complete its first flexible interconnection at a Tesla charging complex in California’s Central Valley late last year.
With initial projects proving the technology is reliable, PG&E started looking to expand its use of flexible connections, including at several more EV charging sites in the Central Valley — and Revel’s two sites in the Bay Area.
Revel has been working with PG&E for about 18 months to identify sites and plan for its flexible connection projects, said Jake Potent, the company’s vice president of corporate affairs. “There are a lot of times we don’t go forward because we’re grid-constrained.”
In New York City, Revel has already built five locations serving a total of 88 fast chargers and plans to more than triple that number to 267 chargers by the end of the year. But finding spots with enough grid capacity to serve those concentrated power demands hasn’t been easy, Paul Suhey, Revel’s chief operating officer and cofounder, told Canary Media back in 2021.
At last week’s ribbon-cutting, Suhey emphasized that building urban fast-charging stations is “kind of hard — well, it’s really hard. It doesn’t happen overnight.”
But finding ways to fit megawatt-scale charging into cities is important for localities in states like New York and California, which have set aggressive goals to end sales of new gasoline-fueled cars by 2035. EVs now make up about one-third of passenger vehicle sales in San Francisco, Mayor Daniel Lurie said at last week’s event, well above the national share of around 8%.
Those adoption numbers gave Revel confidence its fast chargers would get enough use to earn back its costs, Suhey told Canary Media. In New York City, where EV adoption is lower, Revel also operates an all-EV rideshare fleet rather than relying solely on public customers to make the economics of its charging sites work out. New York City and California have mandates for rideshare companies to switch to EVs over the coming years, which further heightens the need for charging sites.
Cities also struggle to bring public charging stations into neighborhoods where most people rent their homes, said Joe Piasecki, public affairs and policy coordinator for the San Francisco Environment Department.
That’s a big problem: Most people charge their EVs at home, but renters face an uphill battle in convincing landlords to install EV chargers on their behalf. That means renters tend to be disproportionately reliant on public EV charging while also having worse access to it. About 70% of San Francisco residents live in multifamily housing, Piasecki said.
The economics of urban EV charging have been helped along in California and New York by regulator-approved programs that instruct utilities to cover the costs of “make-ready” infrastructure — digging trenches, installing transformers and switchgear, and other work required to connect charging stations to the grid — that the site developer might otherwise bear. Similar programs support EV charger installations in Illinois, Massachusetts, and other states.
But make-ready work is just one of the expenses that EV charging creates. Sometimes, big sites might force utilities to upgrade the substations serving entire neighborhoods. Flexible interconnection can allow utilities to postpone those “upstream” upgrades until they can be conducted as part of a broader strategic grid expansion plan.
Demand for those upgrades will increase as high-speed charging expands — and as the latest generation of chargers requires even more power to charge vehicles faster. Electrify America’s flagship indoor charging station in San Francisco, which houses 20 high-speed chargers, required PG&E to deliver high-voltage power typically reserved for transmission grids and major industrial customers.
Public fast chargers aren’t the only option, of course. Slower Level 2 chargers can be installed in garages, along curbs, or into street lights. Even slower Level 1 chargers could offer overnight charging options for multifamily buildings.
But fast chargers that replicate the experience of fueling up at a gas station are widely seen as a vital amenity to expand the pool of people willing to switch to an EV. “Without widespread, easy to use, convenient, reliable fast charging, dreams of EV adoption are just that — dreams,” Suhey said.
Congressional Republicans are taking aim at the Inflation Reduction Act as they seek to slash federal spending.If they choose to repeal the law’s clean-energy tax credits entirely, it could cause energy bills around the country to rise significantly over the next five years, according to a new report by the Rhodium Group, an independent research organization. A repeal would affect some states more than others, with the deep-red state of Texas projected to get hit the hardest.
Rhodium’s report is not the only one to find that bills would rise with the repeal of key IRA tax credits. Research firm Energy Innovation conducted an analysis of several recent studies on the topic and found that repeal would cost households a total of $6 billion per year by 2030. By 2040, costs would balloon to $25 billion annually.
It’s not just households that would feel the pain. Industrial customers as a whole would spend between $8 billion and $14 billion more for energy each year if Inflation Reduction Act incentives are repealed.
Utility bills are already climbing across much of the country. Service shutoffs are on the rise. The Trump administration just eliminated the entire staff of a program that helps low-income households pay for heating and cooling.
Cutting IRA incentives that encourage the construction of solar, wind, and batteries would exacerbate these problems even as the Trump administration touts its commitment to affordable energy. That’s because clean energy is now the cheapest form of energy, and it’s only getting less expensive. There’s a reason that 93% of the power plants developers plan to build this year are carbon-free.
Congressional Republicans are divided on the issue of IRA tax credits, making it unclear exactly how things will play out. But it’s widely expected that the law will be modified to some extent.
House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) has said the approach will be “somewhere between a scalpel and a sledgehammer.” But attacking the law may be too appealing for GOP lawmakers to pass up; it’s an opportunity to cut federal spending, please Trump, and win culture-war points against clean energy all at once.
Still, there is growing support for the IRA among some of the Republican representatives whose constituents benefit most from the law. We’ll know soon if that’s enough to save key parts of it — and avoid spiking utility bills further.
On Wednesday, President Trump unveiled a suite of new tariffs that target pretty much every country and territory in the world — including some where nobody even lives. The full extent of the tariffs’ reach remains unclear, but wind developers, solar manufacturers, tech companies, automakers, and even fossil-fuel producers are already sweating.
The wind industry, already suffering under the Trump administration, is likely to face further setbacks. Wind turbines rely on components from around the world, even if they’re usually assembled in the U.S. The same is true for solar panels and batteries. Endri Lico, an analyst at Wood Mackenzie, told The New York Times that a 25% tariff on imports could raise the cost of building onshore wind turbines by 10% and renewable energy overall by 7% — and many of Trump’s tariffs exceed that 25% threshold.
Higher clean energy costs will pose a big challenge for tech companies looking to expand energy-hungry data centers to power AI, Semafor reports. Renewables are the cheapest, quickest way to add new power to the grid, especially amid yearslong waits for new gas turbines.
The EV industry is also at risk. Most auto factories being built in the U.S. are focused on EVs and batteries, but they still rely on foreign metals and materials. Manufacturers and dealers fear sticker prices on cars could rise as much as $10,000 under the tariffs, Politico reports, exacerbating one of the biggest deterrents to EV adoption: high up-front costs.
The White House exempted imports of oil, gas, and refined products from the tariffs, alleviating fears for refiners that rely on crude oil imports. But oil prices still plunged Thursday morning, as investors worry the tariffs will slow economic growth and lower fuel demand around the world.
The potential slump in overall economic activity could result in one climate upside: a drop in emissions. “In the short-term, any decline is likely to have a positive impact on emissions reduction,” writes finance professor Rakesh Gupta in The Conversation. “We saw this effect during the COVID-19 pandemic, when global production and trade fell.”
But longer-term progress on U.S. clean energy manufacturing and deployment will likely stall if the announced tariffs hold, with implications that go far beyond decarbonization. Here’s how Vanessa Sciarra, vice president of trade and international competitiveness for American Clean Power, put it in a Thursday statement:
“The policy whiplash from these tariffs will ultimately undermine the ability to realize a domestic supply chain and will constrain efforts to deliver energy security and reliability for Americans.”
Illinois pushes for stronger vehicle emissions rules, despite House threats
Illinois advocates are pushing their state to embrace California’s nation-leading vehicle emissions standards, Canary Media’s Kari Lydersen reports — even as President Trump and House Republicans threaten to eliminate the rules.
Sixteen states and D.C. have adopted California’s zero-emission vehicle rules, and 10 have followed its Advanced Clean Trucks regulations. But to be enforceable, those rules needed a waiver from the U.S. EPA. President Trump has called for “terminating” those waivers. On Thursday, House Republicans introduced legislation that would roll the waivers back, even though the nation’s top legislative auditor ruled that they aren’t subject to congressional review.
Crushing the rules would be a setback not only for efforts to decarbonize transportation but to clean up local air quality, too. Illinois advocates said a key reason they’re pushing these rules is to rid places like Joliet and Chicago’s Little Village neighborhood of the air pollution caused by diesel trucking.
Offshore wind’s future keeps getting murkier
It was another bad week for offshore wind. Contract negotiations for the SouthCoast Wind project, planned for off Massachusetts’ coast, were delayed for a third time. And the developer of Maine’s first offshore wind array paused the floating project, citing industry uncertainty.
More setbacks could be on the way. Last month, the U.S. EPA revoked a permit for the Atlantic Shores development off the New Jersey coast — essentially delaying the project for years given the Trump administration’s pause on new offshore wind permitting. Wind opponents could take advantage of the Republican-run EPA to get more projects canceled, with some anti-wind groups telling Canary Media’s Clare Fieseler that agency head Lee Zeldin may be sympathetic to their cause.
Tesla’s sales slump: Chinese EV giant BYD’s sales grew 60% in the first quarter as it makes inroads beyond its home country, while Tesla’s global deliveries fell 13% over the same period amid consumer backlash against Elon Musk. (CNN, New York Times)
Home energy assistance gutted: The Trump administration fires the entire staff in charge of administering the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program, which provides roughly $4 billion annually to help families cover home heating and cooling costs. (Latitude Media)
Cleaning up landfills: In the absence of federal action on curbing landfill methane emissions — the U.S.’s third-largest source of methane pollution — Colorado, Michigan, and other states are stepping up with their own plans. (Canary Media)
Grading the grid: The American Society of Civil Engineers grades the U.S. electric grid a D+, down from the C- it got in 2021, amid a shortage of transformers, increase in severe weather, and lack of transmission capacity. (Utility Dive)
Congress’ rare climate win: The U.S. House overwhelmingly passes a bipartisan bill that would juice development and deployment of clean building materials — a rare win for emissions reduction efforts in Republican-held Congress. (Canary Media)
EV factories falter: More EV and battery factories were canceled in the first quarter of 2025 than were in the past two years combined, according to new data from Atlas Public Policy. (Washington Post)
Reduce, reuse … reconsider? Battery recycling company Li-Cycle, which last year received a $475 million federal loan to build a factory in New York, announces it could go out of business and doesn’t have enough money to meet the requirements to access the loan. (E&E News)
DOGE cuts catch on: Republican-led states look to mirror the federal Department of Government Efficiency’s approach to funding cuts, including by slashing regulators that oversee the oil and gas industry. (E&E News)
This story was originally published by Stateline.
WATER VALLEY, Texas — On a recent day when the wind gusted close to 40 miles per hour, 82-year-old George Neill was making repairs on his ranch, oblivious to the nearby cluster of wind turbines churning the sky behind him.
“After about a year, you never know the things are here,” said Neill, who leases part of his West Texas property to an East Coast–based renewable energy company that placed three wind turbines on it four years ago.
Hundreds of other wind turbines stretch across this landscape, instantly visible to motorists traveling to nearby San Angelo and other towns. The turbines aren’t the only renewable energy producers amid the mesas: From a distance, a glistening array of solar panels resembles a small lake.
Texas is famous for producing oil and gas, but renewable energy has become deeply embedded in the state’s culture and economy. Texas led the nation in generating electricity from wind power and utility-scale solar power in 2023, and wind and solar energy projects contribute tax revenue to local governments and struggling school districts. Texas landowners are expected to receive nearly $30 billion in lease payments under current and expected projects, according to an industry study.
But in recent years, Texas has loosened its political embrace of alternative energy. For the second legislative session in a row, many Texas lawmakers are trying to derail or curb future renewable energy projects.
The shift is rooted in a number of factors, including the second Trump administration’s antipathy toward renewables and an aggressive recommitment to fossil fuels in Texas energy policy. There is lingering concern over the reliability of the state’s electrical grid, after all types of power sources failed during a devastating 2021 winter storm. Some people object to the aesthetics of wind and solar farms, or note that turbines and panels can harm some wildlife.
Texas is not alone. Once focused on stopping individual projects at the local level, renewable energy opponents have been making inroads in other state legislatures, too. They have received backing from the oil and gas industry. And they’ve been galvanized by the 2022 passage of the Inflation Reduction Act, the largest-ever attempt to speed the transition to clean energy.
In neighboring Oklahoma, for example, hundreds of people rallied at the state Capitol in January to urge Republican Gov. Kevin Stitt to issue an executive order halting new wind and solar projects. Like Texas, Oklahoma is a major oil and natural gas producer, but it generated 45% of its total in-state electricity from renewable resources in 2023.
Stitt, a strong supporter of renewable energy, is highly unlikely to issue such an order. But he will leave office in two years, and several Republicans discussed as possible successors appeared at the rally. One of them, Attorney General Gentner Drummond, last month on social media criticized what he called “the green energy scam” and urged Stitt and state lawmakers to tighten wind farm rules during the current session.
In Arizona, the House earlier this year approved a bill that would bar wind farm projects within a dozen miles of any property zoned for residential use — a restriction that would apply to about 90% of the land in the state, according to an analysis by the Arizona Republic.
In Ohio, a 2021 law allowing county commissioners to create restricted areas where utility-scale solar and wind projects can’t be built has had a huge impact, as 26 Ohio counties have banned renewable energy projects. This year, GOP lawmakers have introduced legislation that would end all state solar subsidies.
And in Missouri, Republican legislators are pushing a bill that would raise taxes on farmers who lease their land for wind or solar energy projects.
The expanding opposition to renewables isn’t unexpected, said Joshua Rhodes, a research scientist at the University of Texas at Austin who studies the power grid. He noted that wind, solar, and battery storage have rapidly become the “cheapest way to put more energy on the grid.”
“They’re victims of their own success,” he told Stateline. “They are relatively new players to the market, so there’s going to be pushback from incumbents.”
At the center of the current debate in Texas is state Sen. Lois Kolkhorst, a Republican committee chair who has resurrected a 2023 bill that would require new utility-scale solar and wind projects to get permits from the state’s Public Utility Commission, regulations that aren’t imposed on projects for natural gas and other energy sources. The bill also calls for set-back requirements and cleanup funds.
Kolkhorst, in a statement to Stateline, called the legislation “a common-sense approach to the encroachment of wind and solar facilities being scattered across our great state with no consideration or safeguards for landowners or the environment.”
At an hourslong Senate committee hearing recently where opponents of Kolkhorst’s bill outnumbered supporters, farmers, ranchers, and small-town Texans sometimes found themselves on opposite sides, either arguing that sprawling wind farms and solar arrays are a lasting source of economic vitality or a threat to a beloved way of life.
“The land isn’t just a piece of property to us,” said Laurie Dihle, who lives on 154 acres in Franklin County with her husband. “It’s our home, our sanctuary, and a big part of who we are. When we look out across the road, we see rolling green pastures and trees. Now we’re facing the possibility of that view and so much more being replaced by a sprawling solar farm.”
Environmentalists and industry representatives view Kolkhorst’s bill as a roadblock in the march toward green energy. Luke Metzger, executive director of Environment Texas, said the bill would open the door to “a really arbitrary discriminatory permitting regime,” requiring wind and solar developers to get permits that other energy producers do not have to have.
Describing herself as a “lifelong wildlife conservationist,” Kolkhorst said she introduced the bipartisan bill with nine other senators in an effort that “looks past the billions in wind and solar subsidies to instead focus on the total impact of these projects on our land, people, and wildlife.”
But oil and gas projects also can harm wildlife, and scientists note that the emissions released by fossil fuels worsen climate change disasters.
Insiders following the legislation, including Metzger, identify one of the bill’s major supporters as Kolkhorst donor Dan Friedkin, a billionaire Houston businessman.
Friedkin, chairman emeritus of the Texas Parks and Wildlife Commission, is owner and CEO of The Friedkin Group, a consortium of businesses and investments that includes Gulf States Toyota. Gulf States is one of the world’s largest distributors of Toyota vehicles and parts, with exclusive rights to sell Toyotas in Texas and four other states. Gulf States Toyota Inc. State PAC made four donations totaling $42,500 to Kolkhorst from October 2020 to October 2024, according to the Texas Ethics Commission.
Friedkin is a stunt pilot and outdoorsman with a ranch in South Texas. Neither he nor his lobbyist, Laird Doran, senior vice president for public and legal affairs at The Friedkin Group, returned phone calls from Stateline.
Texas lawmakers have filed dozens of wind- and solar-related bills this session, including measures aimed at restricting the placement of battery-storage facilities, curbing tax breaks and subsidies for renewable companies, and limiting the amount of electricity solar and wind projects contribute to the state’s power grid.
Republican state Sen. Phil King, for example, is pushing a bill that would mandate that 50% of all new electricity must come from natural gas, nuclear, or battery storage. King said solar and wind power should be part of the state’s energy mix, but he claims they aren’t reliable enough to serve as the foundation.
State Rep. Don McLaughlin, a Republican, has introduced legislation mandating a study of the economic impact of wind and solar projects on local communities, as well as noise and health effects, threats to wildlife, and the challenges of disassembling worn-out systems. Sweetwater, Texas, has thousands of composite blades piled up in “a windmill graveyard.”
But many rural GOP lawmakers whose districts long ago sprouted oil rigs and pumpjacks are now strong supporters of wind and solar power.
“It’s nonstop windmills on both side of the road for 70 miles,” said state Rep. John Smithee of Amarillo, describing a typical drive from his hometown in the Texas Panhandle to the Capitol in Austin. “Almost all of those [constituents] have benefited.”
State Rep. Drew Darby, whose northwest Texas district includes San Angelo and Water Valley, an unincorporated community of around 300, said revenue from wind power has resulted in countywide improvements and lease payments to property owners.
“It’s been a positive impact on rural effectiveness,” said Darby. “Landowners … are receiving nice payments for leasing the property.”
In Water Valley, taxes from the increased revenue paved the way for a tax-free bond election that enabled the town’s K-12 school to add an upscale weight room, a technical educational facility, and a “cafetorium” that serves as a dining room and performance hall. The school building had previously been so small that students had to eat in shifts.
The wind farm is expected to generate $123 million in local taxes over the 30-year life of the project, as well as more than $100 million in payments to landowners.
Neill, the West Texas rancher, said he takes the wind turbines in stride as he roams across his 1,700-acre spread.
He’s not at liberty to reveal the amount of his payments. He’s not getting rich, he said, but the money “makes a difference when you’re trying run a ranch.”
Another proposed energy-saving program is on the chopping block in Ohio.
Duke Energy Ohio quietly dropped plans late last year to roll out a broad portfolio of programs that would have boosted energy efficiency and encouraged customers to use less electricity during times of peak demand. The plans, which would have saved ratepayers nearly $126 million over three years after deductions for costs, were part of a regulatory filing last April that sought to increase charges on customers’ electric bills.
The move came after settlement talks with other stakeholders, including the state’s consumer advocate, which opposes collecting ratepayer money to provide the programs to people who aren’t in low-income groups.
State regulators are now weighing whether to approve the settlement with a much smaller efficiency program focused on low-income neighborhoods.
The case is the latest chapter in a struggle to restore utility-run programs for energy efficiency after House Bill 6, the 2019 nuclear and coal bailout law that also gutted the state’s renewable energy standards and eliminated requirements for utilities to help customers save energy.
Studies show that utility-run energy-efficiency programs are among the cheapest ways to meet growing electricity needs and cut greenhouse gas emissions. Lower demand means fossil-fuel power plants can run less often. Less wasted energy translates into lower bills for customers who take advantage of efficiency programs. Even customers who don’t directly participate benefit because the programs lower peak demand when power costs the most.
Energy efficiency can also put downward pressure on capacity prices — amounts paid by grid operators to electricity producers to make sure enough generation will be available for future needs. Due to high projected demand compared to available generation, capacity prices for most of the PJM region, including Ohio, will jump ninefold in June to about $270 per megawatt-day.
“At a time when PJM is saying we’re facing capacity shortages, we should be doing everything we can to reduce demand,” said Rob Kelter, a senior attorney for the Environmental Law & Policy Center.
Since 2019, the Public Utilities Commission of Ohio has generally rejected utility efforts to offer widely available, ratepayer-funded programs for energy efficiency. Legislative efforts to clarify that such programs are allowed under Ohio law have been introduced but failed to pass.
In the current case, Duke Energy Ohio, which serves about 750,000 customers in southwestern Ohio, proposed a portfolio of efficiency offerings that would have cost ratepayers about $75 million over the course of three years but created net savings of nearly $126 million over the same period.
The package included energy-efficient appliance rebates, incentives for off-peak energy use, education programs for schools, and home energy assessments. The company also proposed incentives for customers who let it curtail air conditioning on hot days through smart thermostats.
In November, Duke Energy Ohio filed a proposed settlement with the PUCO staff, the Office of the Ohio Consumers’ Counsel, industry groups, and others. The terms drop all the programs for energy efficiency, except for one geared toward low-income consumers at a cost of up to $2.4 million per year. The Environmental Law & Policy Center and Ohio Environmental Council objected, as did a consumer group, the Citizens Utility Board of Ohio.
The PUCO will decide whether to approve the settlement plan by evaluating whether it benefits ratepayers and the public interest, whether it is the result of “serious bargaining” among knowledgable parties, and whether it violates any important regulatory principles or practices. Witnesses testified for and against the settlement at a hearing in January. Parties filed briefs in February and March.
Duke Energy Ohio argued in its brief that the settlement will still benefit customers and serve the public interest, even without the energy-efficiency programs for consumers who aren’t low-income. It also suggested that cutting out most of the energy-efficiency measures was needed to reach a deal with other stakeholders and the PUCO.
Staff at the PUCO said the settlement would benefit customers by cutting some projects and limiting how high other charges could go. They dismissed objections about dropping broadly available programs for energy efficiency. “[T]he standard is whether ratepayers benefit, not whether they could have benefitted more,” state lawyers wrote in their brief.
The Environmental Law & Policy Center, Ohio Environmental Council, and Citizens Utility Board of Ohio all argued there is no evidence to support dropping the energy-efficiency programs. They questioned the approach by a Consumers’ Counsel witness of counting only avoided rider costs as benefits, without considering the projected savings from energy efficiency.
The Consumers’ Counsel defended its perspective in an email to Canary Media. “We oppose subsidizing energy efficiency programs through utility rates when those products and services are already available in the competitive marketplace,” the office’s statement said. “And when the programs are run by the utility, there are added charges to consumers, such as shared savings and lost distribution revenue.” The statement also noted that other PUCO decisions have refused to allow energy-efficiency programs that would serve groups other than low-income households.
Last year, for example, the PUCO allowed FirstEnergy to run a low-income energy-efficiency program but turned down its proposal to include generally available rebates in a rider package. Those are “better suited for the competitive market, where both residential and non-residential customers will be able to obtain products and services to meet their individual needs,” the commission’s opinion said. The commission did, however, say the company should develop a rebate program for smart thermostats to help customers manage their energy use. FirstEnergy included that in its latest rider plan filed on Jan. 31.
Ohio has been particularly devoid of programs like those dropped in Duke’s settlement since HB 6 took effect, said Trent Dougherty, a lawyer for the Citizens Utility Board of Ohio. Calculations as of 2019 estimated the law’s gutting of the state’s energy-efficiency standard costs each consumer savings of nearly $10 per month.
“Continuing a pattern of wish-casting, that the market will provide the savings that HB 6 took away, is not a solution,” Dougherty said.
The world needs to move away from fossil fuels to low-carbon power if we’re to reduce our carbon emissions and tackle climate change.
There are two key sources of low-carbon power: renewables (which include solar, wind, hydropower and others) and nuclear.
While rapid growth in solar and wind has increased the amount of power coming from renewables, a lack of enthusiasm for nuclear means it’s playing a shrinking role in the global electricity mix.
In the chart, you can see the share of global electricity coming from fossil fuels, renewables, and nuclear since 1985. Since 2000, nuclear and renewables have followed very different trajectories. Back then, both categories made up a similar share of global electricity, but today, renewables make up more than three times as much: 30% compared to 9%.
The total amount of electricity produced by nuclear plants is almost exactly the same as it was two decades ago. But because the world produces much more electricity overall, its share of the electricity mix has declined.
Explore the electricity mix of different countries in our Energy Data Explorer →
A simple principle has shaped Texas’ electricity system for the last two decades: Developers should build the types of power plants they think will compete best on the state’s open market.
As the cost of solar, wind, and grid batteries has plummeted in recent years, developers in the Lone Star State have increasingly opted to build clean energy projects — a whole lot of them. The state generated the most clean power in the nation last year, and solar and storage dominate new power capacity forecast to come online in 2025.
That principle — and Texas’ rapidly expanding clean energy industry — could be thrown out the window if a bill that recently passed the state Senate becomes law, Julian Spector reports for Canary Media. The legislation would require 50% of new power plant capacity in the state to be“sourced from dispatchable generation other than battery energy storage,” penalizing solar and wind power, which pair best with batteries.
An earlier iteration of SB 388 explicitly called for half of new power plants to “use natural gas,” and though the bill text no longer says that, the outcome would be the same: Gas would be the key beneficiary.
But developers aren’t exactly lining up to build gas plants. It can take years to source the specialized parts needed to get gas power plants built and running, while solar panels and batteries are mass-produced and can be installed far more quickly and cheaply. In fact, back in 2023 Texas created a $5 billion fund to issue low-interest loans to companies building gas power plants — but last month a developer that had applied for loans for two such projects withdrew them due to “equipment procurement constraints.”
An SB 388–driven slowdown of renewable deployment would meanwhile pose reliability challenges for the state, which famously suffered major blackouts in 2021 in large part because of challenges in the gas system. Since then, solar and batteries have repeatedly helped the state avoid weather-related outages. And with data centers, cryptocurrency mining operations, and new manufacturing all slated to boost Texas’ energy demand, the state is going to need more cheap, fast, clean power — not less.
Put reliability over politics, power grid leaders say
Leaders of the country’s seven power operating systems told Congress on Tuesday that it should prioritize reliability over politics as it considers the future of the U.S. energy system. Electricity demand is set to rise dramatically as more data centers and other power-hungry facilities come online and people adopt EVs and electric appliances. Pitting clean energy against fossil fuels will only lead to power shortages and higher prices, the executives said.
New England in particular faces a “serious challenge” if political battles over clean energy continue, the head of its grid operator said. The region is counting on offshore wind to meet growing demand, but President Donald Trump’s attacks on the industry throw that future into uncertainty.
Hyundai brings ‘low-carbon’ steel, EV manufacturing to the U.S.
Hyundai Motor Group announced a $21 billion investment on Monday that will amp up its U.S. manufacturing presence. Nearly $6 billion will go toward a “low-carbon” steel plant in Louisiana that will supply the company’s Alabama and Georgia auto factories, Alexander C. Kaufman reports for Canary Media. The low-carbon claim comes from Hyundai’s plans to use an electric arc furnace. But it’s only a small step toward greener steel, one environmental advocate told Canary, since Hyundai will likely still use fossil gas in its process.
Also this week, Hyundai opened a giant plant outside of Savannah, Georgia, where it’ll manufacture its increasingly popular Ioniq EVs.
Renewables on the rise: Wind, solar, and other renewables were installed at an astonishing pace last year — but energy emissions still increased as demand for electricity soared. (Canary Media)
Tesla’s global challenges: Tesla faces more setbacks as Chinese EV firm BYD reports 2024 revenue that exceeds the U.S. company’s, and as its market share continues to fall in Europe. (CNN, Reuters)
Energy dominance?: Energy executives express deep concerns about the oil and gas sector’s outlook in a new Dallas Fed survey, pointing to President Trump’s trade and tariff policies as headwinds that will drive up drilling costs. (Reuters)
Building to decarbonization: A new report details the many ways buildings must decarbonize — from the materials they’re built with to how they’re powered and heated — and the massive amount of coordination it’ll take to make that happen. (Canary Media)
Recycling revolution: The need for metals and minerals for the clean energy transition poses a huge environmental toll, but the U.S. can combat that by accelerating recycling, which has stalled in comparison to some other countries. (Grist)
Coal’s comeback: The Trump administration rolls back coal plant regulations as utilities move to extend the life of facilities to meet an anticipated spike in power demand from tech companies, though critics warn hopes of a coal comeback are “wishful thinking.” (Washington Post)
Get-out-of-pollution-free card: The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency says it will no longer “shut down any stage of energy production” that doesn’t pose an imminent health threat, a move a former Biden EPA official says amounts to the agency telling companies, especially those selling fossil fuels, that it will let them break the law. (New York Times)
Fossil-fueled feedback loop: Hotter weather is driving increased fossil-fuel use as it spurs people to run air conditioners more often, creating a vicious cycle of climate change, the International Energy Agency finds. (New York Times)
Two opposing forces are tugging at the global energy transition: the inexorable rise of clean energy and the insatiable demand for electricity.
Last year, over 700 gigawatts of clean energy capacity were installed worldwide, per a March International Energy Agency report. That’s more than double the amount built in 2022.
Despite the blistering growth of carbon-free power, global emissions from the power sector rose by 1.7%.
Renewable resources produced 32% of the world’s electricity last year. That’s just shy of coal’s share of 35%. Taken together with nuclear power, carbon-free sources met over 40% of global electricity demand in 2024 — a record high.
The reason clean energy is producing more power than ever is simple: The world is building staggering amounts of new clean capacity. Most of this is happening in China, and the vast majority of what’s being built is solar power. In 2024 alone, 553 GW of solar panels were installed worldwide; the sun-powered resource is growing so fast that it keeps forcing industry analysts to revise their forecasts upward.
So, why aren’t power-sector emissions falling? Because global electricity use is surging.
Power demand rose by 4.3% last year, per the IEA, nearly double the average annual growth rate over the past decade. And while clean energy’s slice of the electricity production pie is bigger than ever, the overall pie itself is growing. The net effect: Power plants ultimately burned through 1% more coal, gas, and oil last year than they did in 2023, even though the global share of electricity produced by fossil fuels actually declined.
Air conditioning was a key driver of this uptick in demand, thanks to a devastating feedback loop: As emissions from burning fossil fuels push global temperatures to record heights, people use more AC — in turn creating more demand for electricity that is still produced using mostly fossil fuels. Data centers and other industrial customers are also boosting demand.
The only way to meet the urgent need for more power and bring down emissions at the same time is to build clean energy — solar, wind, batteries, or hydropower and nuclear — faster than even last year’s record-setting pace.
This story was updated on March 28 with details about global power sector emissions in 2024.
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