GOLDEN CRESCENT AND 1000 ISLAND NEWS

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...

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...

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...

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...

  New York: Solar Siting Bill Advances The Agriculture Committee on May 7 approved a bill that would prevent state funding from supporting commercial solar farms on farmland or sensitive environmental areas. Committee Chair Michelle Hinchey, D-Ulster, said her bill changes funding opportunities for solar fields but not the permitting process. “I believe we need renewable energy and we need solar development, but we need to be thoughtful and strategic about where we place them,” Hinchey said. The bill doesn’t address concerns from Sen. George Borrello, R-Chautauqua, that the Office of Renewable Energy Siting and Electric Transmission has too much power to approve solar projects despite other regulations and local opposition. But he said the bill would cut off the funding solar companies need to make their projects profitable. “These people are not in the energy business,” Borrello said. “They’re in the government subsidy business.” The proposed funding ban would not apply to agrivol...

  Democrats pressed Interior Secretary Doug Burgum over the Trump administration’s policies throttling clean-energy projects. Democrats pressed Interior Secretary Doug Burgum over languishing clean-energy projects—a clash that has escalated since the Trump administration paid a company to halt its offshore wind plans. Rep. Jared Huffman (D., Calif.) said the administration has been “bullying offshore wind into abandoning billions in investments” and that the throttling of some renewable projects is “driving U.S. energy policy down a one-way street of fossil fuel dependency,” during a House Committee on Offshore Resources on Wednesday. “And now it’s crashing the car with the war in Iran.” “I know people keep saying it’s ideological. It’s not; there’s a real national security risk,” said Burgum, referencing recent offshore wind pauses that the Trump administration said were necessary for confidential security reasons.  Burgum spoke about increasing U.S. energy production, in par...