Posts

Resistance grows against New York’s 18 planned solar farms that locals say ruin land, kill animals and won’t create much energy

Image
  May 26, 2026, New York is strong-arming 18 industrial-scale solar power plants into rural communities across the state despite strong opposition from locals.  Schuylerville farmer Alexandra Fasulo had just settled into the idyllic acreage she purchased in 2023 when Gov. Kathy Hochul’s bulldozers came roaring in, poised to thrash 1,800 acres of protected grassland to build a 100-megawatt-capacity solar energy complex in nearby Fort Edward, NY. 22 “We were like serfs coming before a king. It was so much worse than I ever imagined,” Schuylerville farmer Alexandra Fasulo told The Post .   22 The footprint of the massive, 1,800-acre Fort Edward solar power plant in upstate New York. Local feel helpless and infuriated as the state squashes any dissent on the massive, wildlife-killing green energy plant. Worried that chemical runoff and contamination may affect her farm, Fasulo attended a town meeting last fall to voice concerns to developers and state authorities. “We were li...

Wind-Permit Stall Is Threatening $50 Billion in US Developments

May 23, 2026   Takeaways by Bloomberg The Trump administration's halt to approvals for new onshore wind projects imperils $50 billion in wind investments and 150,000 jobs, according to a trade group. The Pentagon has stalled roughly 130 proposed wind projects in an approval process, which has stopped investments that would generate enough power to light 20 million US homes. The Defense Department's review process for wind farms is meant to ensure the projects don't interfere with military operations, but the power association alleges the department's actions amount to an across-the-board halt on projects.   About $50 billion in wind investments and 150,000 jobs are imperiled by the Trump administration’s effective halt to approvals for new onshore projects, a trade group said.   The Pentagon has bottled up roughly 130 proposed wind projects in an approval process that has stalled investments that would generate enough power to light 20 million US homes, according to a d...

How Many Solar Panels Would It Take To Equal One Nuclear Reactor?

Image
The world is growing more power-hungry all the time, with more and larger devices, appliances, and vehicles hooking into the grid. It's a big part of what makes it difficult to adopt renewable power sources like solar panels on a large scale, especially compared to the monumental power output of a single next-generation nuclear reactor. Both solar panels and nuclear reactors may generate electricity, but it would take over 8.5 million solar panels receiving light around the clock to generate the same kind of output that a nuclear reactor is capable of.   While a nuclear power plant requires a hefty infrastructure investment to get up and running, a solar panel plant, despite being a renewable energy source, isn't exactly free to build . Building the enormous number of panels necessary to match a reactor's output, to say nothing of developing safe ways to store excess power and hook it into local electrical grids, unfortunately means that going fully solar simply isn't f...

‘Nervous energy’: US wind and solar projects at risk as tax credits expire

Image
Martha Muir in Penn Yan, New York   17 May, 2026   A boom in the construction of US wind and solar projects is under threat from a lack of labour and equipment and the removal of tax credits by a Trump administration hostile to renewable energy.   According to data from Cleanview, an energy research firm, solar capacity under construction has risen by 50 per cent since the start of 2025, while wind projects are up 60 per cent.   The boom is being driven by developers racing to take advantage of tax credits before they expire . President Donald Trump, who has long been opposed to solar and wind energy, gutted the incentives in his so-called “Big Beautiful Bill”.   Solar and wind projects must begin construction by July 4 and prove they are building continuously to qualify for the tax credits — a process known as “safe harbouring” — crunching the timeframe developers thought they would have to get projects off the ground.   Under Joe Biden’s Inflation Reduct...

Trump’s Tax Law Is Slowing Down Projects and Piling Up Legal Work

Certainty, certainty, certainty — three things that are of paramount importance for anyone making an investment decision. There’s little of it to be found in the renewable energy business these days.   The main vectors of uncertainty are obvious enough — whipsawing trade policy , protean administrative hostility toward wind , a long-awaited summit with China that appears to have done nothing to resolve the war with Iran. But there’s still one big “known unknown” — rules governing how companies are allowed to interact with “prohibited foreign entities,” which remain unwritten nearly a year after the One Big Beautiful Bill Act slapped them on just about every remaining clean energy tax credit.   The list of countries that qualify as “foreign entities of concern” is short, including Russian, Iran, North Korea, and China. Post-OBBBA, a firm may be treated as a “foreign-influenced entity” if at least 15% of its debt is issued by one of these countries — though in reality, China i...

Q1 saw net loss of 5,900 renewable energy manufacturing jobs: EDF report

Dive Brief: Renewable energy manufacturing employment took a hit in the first quarter of 2026, with a total loss of about 8,100 jobs and a net loss of 5,900 jobs, according to an Environmental Defense Fund report . The sector also saw $1.4 billion in cancelled investments, although there was a $1.1 billion net increase in investments overall. The cancellations followed federal actions targeting renewable energy, electric vehicles and building energy efficiency, as well as emissions standards. Dive Insight: President Donald Trump cut many clean energy initiatives when he signed the One Big Beautiful Bill Act last year, and his administration has continued in that vein through executive and regulatory actions. For example, in February alone: The Treasury Department released guidance on access to federal renewable energy tax credits, based on whether the manufacturer utilizes components from a prohibited foreign entity. The Commerce Department increased tariffs on Chinese-imported batter...