Restrictions on solar development are proliferating nationwide, “often rooted in misinformation or unfounded fears,” including ones that involve “potential environmental and human safety risks,” according to an article published late last year in the Brigham Young University Law Review.
About 40 percent of American adults said in a 2022 poll that we are living in the “end times.” For much of the country, it’s an idea that’s almost mundane. The rapture is spliced into their Sunday sermons and enchants their world with a fearsome possibility. I’d hear bad news on television as a kid and think, is this it? Has the time come?
A report from CarbonBrief carried the revelation made by a think tank called Ember. Based on Ember's calculations in its latest global electricity review, coal-fueled electricity generation dropped by 0.2% last year to 33%, while renewables maintained a steady upward trajectory to edge past coal, hitting 33.8%.
Wind and solar power catered for 99% of the growth in electricity demand last year (solar represented the majority of that – 75% of it, in fact). The International Energy Agency separately said in its Global Energy Review 2026 report that "the absolute increase of solar PV generation in 2025 is the largest ever observed for any source".
The Trump administration will pay energy companies hundreds of millions of dollars to abandon their plans to build two wind farms off the U.S. coast, the Interior Department said Monday, in a repeat of a tactic the government used to cancel other offshore wind leases last month.
The firms will forfeit their leases in federal waters for the two wind farms, one of which would have been built off New York and New Jersey and the other off California. The government will reimburse the companies a combined $885 million, the amount they paid for the leases under the Biden administration.
In exchange, the companies have pledged to invest that money in oil and gas projects, including liquefied natural gas facilities along the Gulf Coast.