GOLDEN CRESCENT AND 1000 ISLAND NEWS

  US President Donald Trump continues to frustrate wind farm development as the 4 July cut-off for claiming tax credits looms   Under President Donald Trump's One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBBA) , wind projects must have started construction by 4 July and be completed within four calendar years to keep the federal credits. If developers miss the construction deadline, the projects must instead be commissioned by the end of 2027 – a tight schedule. In the US, tax credits substantially reduce a project owner’s tax bill.    “There’s a near-term peak in installations this year,” said Harrison Sholler, a wind analyst at BloombergNEF. “It’s a little elevated next year too, then there’s a pretty sharp decline in 2028 as the market struggles to adjust to a post-tax-credit world.”  After the OBBBA was signed into law, on 4 July 2025, there was a huge rush of wind projects being ‘safe-harboured’, or deemed eligible for tax credits, Wood Mackenzie’s North American wind anal...

  As the latest heat wave discomforts Europe, France is arguing about air conditioning. Marine Le Pen’s far-right National Rally supports issuing €20 billion (about $23 billion) in interest-free loans to buy 30 million to 40 million units and insulation. The French left argues that air conditioning is a selfish indulgence and an ecological menace. Jean-Luc Mélenchon, the country’s most prominent left-wing leader, warned that cooling would mean “increasing the damage,” and says he wouldn’t expose his grandchildren to air conditioning because it “destroys your sinuses.” To an American, this is disorienting. Nearly 90% of U.S. households have air conditioning. But in much of Europe, cooling is a hot issue on which the populist right has the better side of the argument. That should unsettle American progressives, who assume the far right is consistently irrational while the left is the party of science. On air conditioning, the opposite is closer to the truth. Keeping people cool in...

  June 29, 2026 The U.S. isn’t the only country losing offshore wind developers For much of the past decade, Japan looked primed for offshore wind development for the same reasons the American industry first took root in the Northeast: It’s coastal, densely populated, and — with its nuclear power stations either shut down or idled — it’s more reliant on fossil fuels that it doesn’t locally produce than ever before. But building turbines off Japan’s shores has proven tricky as project costs ballooned. On Friday, Norway’s Equinor announced its decision to close its offshore wind division in Japan, after failing to win any leases at repeated auctions over the past eight years. “This decision reflects a reassessment of Equinor’s strategic direction, with a strengthened focus on integrated power markets,” the company said in a statement on its Japanese website. The move comes two years after Denmark’s Orsted exited Japan. Last August, a consortium led by the industrial giant Mitsubishi...

 J une 29 (Reuters) - Trump administration policies that have stalled permits for renewable energy projects are putting more than $121 billion of ​investment at risk and slowing development of wind, solar and storage ‌capacity needed to meet rising power demand, according to a report published on Monday.   The findings by energy research firm Wood Mackenzie highlighted tension between President Donald Trump’s goal of fast-tracking energy infrastructure to ​support the artificial intelligence boom and his opposition to renewable energy. The report said ​it looked at early-stage projects valued at $121 billion that face investment ⁠ risks due to delays.   A total of 92 gigawatts of clean energy projects, ​about enough to power 69 million homes, face heightened federal scrutiny following changes last ​year including a Department of the Interior directive that renewable energy permits at every stage required the approval of senior officials.   Those measures have len...

  Key Points The One Big Beautiful Bill Act imposed new eligibility deadlines for wind and solar tax credits that have prompted a surge in project construction activity and a corresponding increase in demand for debt and equity financing. With the long-term outlook for wind and solar tax credits dimming , lenders and investors seeking additional investment opportunities are exploring other technologies — including nuclear, geothermal and other emerging energy sources — that will remain eligible for federal tax credits and are expected to attract increasing investment in the coming years. Factors including increased energy demand for data centers, AI and advanced manufacturing and higher tax credit rates under the Inflation Reduction Act have continued to contribute to growth in project scale, requiring developers to adopt increasingly sophisticated transactions to meet their financing needs for so-called “mega projects.” __________ The One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBBA), when signe...

  Senior executives at EDP, Apex, Pattern, and other large renewables companies did something remarkable in a recent court filing: They publicly criticized the administration.   Jael Holzman   June 18, 2026   Heatmap Illustration/Getty Images Major energy developers are going all in against the Trump administration in court, in what appears to be the first time many are publicly challenging the president in spite of any potential risk of retaliation. As I chronicled , Trump is now effectively blocking any new wind projects in the U.S., utilizing federal authority over American aerospace to stop what was once a run-of-the-mill approval process for the height of turbines through the Federal Aviation Administration. They’ve done this by using the Defense Department to gum up the interagency review process, with the Pentagon holding up bureaucratic machinations citing vague, alleged national security concerns. Earlier this month, regional renewable energy trade groups f...