GOLDEN CRESCENT AND 1000 ISLAND NEWS

  OAKFIELD, N.Y. — Country music star John Rich is leading a federal challenge against New York’s approval process for large-scale solar projects, claiming the state is bypassing U.S. Department of Agriculture standards to fast-track development on prime farmland. Rich is working with the Trump administration in what’s shaping up as a showdown with Gov. Kathy Hochul over solar expansion in upstate New York. Some of the largest solar projects in the state are in Genesee County, where the Cider Solar Project spans 4,600 acres leased from more than 30 landowners in Oakfield and Elba. Federal officials are questioning whether the state violated USDA standards by allowing projects on prime farmland. A letter to Hochul demanding answers was signed by Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins, EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin and Rich, who serves as special envoy for American landowners. “Upstate New York is virtually all prime farmland. It’s some of the best farmland in the United States,” Rich...

  Dive Brief: Ahead of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act’s July 4 deadline for wind and solar projects to commence construction in order to capitalize on the Inflation Reduction Act’s investment and production tax credits, developers have met the occasion and safe-harbored a massive pipeline of projects, industry experts say.  Crux, which provides a marketplace for the transfer of tax credits, in February estimated a 170 GW pipeline of safe harbored projects. “So it’s presumably only grown over the past seven months,” Josh Price, Crux’s director of intelligence and research, told Utility Dive. Price, along with Camelot Energy Group Head of Energy Storage and Emerging Markets Raafe Khan, predicted that as projects are no longer eligible to qualify for IRA tax credits, the price of power purchase agreements for those projects is likely to go up . Dive Insight: “ If you don’t have the ITC, you have to make that up with revenue and cost,” Khan told Utility Dive. “There’s not so much...

  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...