Solar Now

The $220 million project has a capacity of 305 MW and is located in the province of Mendoza, in the sunny Cuyo region.
Image: Prensa Gobierno de Mendoza
From pv magazine Latam
The province of Mendoza has inaugurated the El Quemado Solar Park, located in the department of Las Heras, in the province of Mendoza, in the sunny Cuyo region.
With an installed capacity of 360 MW, the facility is now the largest photovoltaic plant in Argentina. Prior to the commissioning, the country’s largest solar facity was the 315 MW Cauchari complex.
Originally developed by the provincial utility Empresa Mendocina de Energía Sociedad Anónima (Emesa), the $220 million project was subsequently acquired and built by YPF Luz. The first 100 MW unit entered commercial operation in December last year.
The inauguration ceremony was attended by Governor Alfredo Cornejo, YPF President and CEO Horacio Marín, and Chief of Staff Manuel Adorni. Officials highlighted that El Quemado is the first renewable energy project approved under Argentina’s Large Investment Incentive Regime (RIGI), designed to attract investments through fiscal, customs, and foreign exchange incentives.
The plant spans approximately 620 hectares and comprises more than 511,000 bifacial solar modules, 5,800 trackers, 1,170 inverters, and 40 transformer stations. It has an estimated capacity factor of 31.4%. According to official estimates, annual generation will be sufficient to cover residential demand in the city of Mendoza, as well as the departments of Las Heras and Lavalle.
The grid connection works included a new transformer station linked to the Argentine Interconnection System (SADI), as well as a substation equipped with GIS technology and an outgoing feeder for three 220 kV/33 kV transformers. The project also included 180 km of fiber-optic cabling for control and protection systems.
Construction lasted 18 months and peaked at more than 350 workers, with 87% of labor sourced locally. Key technology suppliers included JinkoSolar, Arctech Solar, and Huawei.
With El Quemado now online, Mendoza exceeds 700 MW of installed solar capacity and is moving toward a provincial pipeline projected to surpass 1 GW. Among upcoming developments are the Anchoris and San Rafael projects, each with 180 MW of capacity.
Several power purchase agreements (PPAs) have meanwhile been secured. In December last year, YPF Luz signed an agreement with Molinos Río de la Plata to extend its renewable supply contract to 2030, increasing the company’s clean energy share to up to 80%, with the potential to reach 100% in the future. The agreement builds on a prior contract signed in September 2023, which included the 100 MW Zonda Solar Park in San Juan, and now incorporates generation from El Quemado.
In March this year, YPF Luz signed a three-year agreement with Skyonline, an Argentine technology company specializing in digital infrastructure, to supply approximately 7,200 MWh annually. The contract will cover 85% of the electricity demand of Skyonline’s data center in downtown Buenos Aires, supplied through generation from El Quemado and the General Levalle Solar Park in Córdoba.
In April, YPF Luz also announced an agreement with Molinos Basile, covering 50% of the company’s electricity demand, equivalent to around 2,200 MWh per year.
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London headquartered EBRD approved a senior secured loan of up to EUR 53 million for SPV Blue 2 and SPV Blue 3 in Albania. The financing supports construction of a 160 MW solar photovoltaic plant and a 60 MW co-located BESS project. Total project investment is estimated at EUR 105 million. The development is expected to become one of the region’s first utility-scale co-located solar PV and storage projects. EFSD+ Hi-Bar guarantees are expected to provide first-loss risk coverage for the project. The project aims to diversify Albania’s electricity mix and reduce dependence on hydropower.

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India installed a record 15.3GW of solar capacity in the first quarter of 2026, according to new data from market research firm Mercom. 
The country’s quarterly solar additions rose 143% year-on-year from 6.3GW in Q1 2025 and were up 49% from the 10.3GW installed in Q4 2025, marking the highest quarterly solar capacity additions recorded in India to date. This was driven by developers rushing to commission projects ahead of looming policy changes and transmission waiver reductions, the report said.  
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Large-scale solar projects accounted for 12.6GW of installations during the quarter, representing 82% of total capacity additions. Installations in the segment increased 55% quarter-on-quarter and 147% year-on-year, while open access projects contributed 21% of utility-scale additions. 
According to Mercom, a combination of approaching policy deadlines and improved transmission readiness across key solar markets accelerated project commissioning activity during the quarter. 
One of the primary drivers was the upcoming implementation of the Approved List of Models and Manufacturers (ALMM) List-II, scheduled for June 2026. Developers accelerated commissioning activity under the current procurement framework amid concerns over constrained domestic DCR cell availability and rising module procurement costs. 
Execution activity was also supported by increased deployment under the Government of India’s Pradhan Mantri Kisan Urja Suraksha evam Utthaan Mahabhiyan (PM-KUSUM) scheme, alongside developers seeking to complete open access projects ahead of the next phase of Inter-State Transmission System (ISTS) waiver reductions. 
India added 19.9GW of total power capacity during Q1 2026, with solar accounting for 77% of all new additions, according to the report. 
As of March 2026, India’s cumulative installed solar capacity stood at 152GW, including utility-scale and rooftop systems. Large-scale projects represented 85% of installed solar capacity, while rooftop installations accounted for 15%. Solar energy now accounts for 28% of India’s total installed power capacity and 55% of installed renewable energy capacity. 
Rajasthan remained the leading state for cumulative utility-scale solar installations, accounting for 32% of the national total. Gujarat and Karnataka followed with 21% and 11%, respectively. 
During Q1 2026, Gujarat and Rajasthan led quarterly utility-scale installations, contributing around 40% and 39% of new additions, respectively, while Maharashtra ranked third with 6%. 
Mercom said the average cost of utility-scale solar projects using TOPCon DCR modules declined nearly 1% quarter-on-quarter but increased 6% year-on-year. 
Meanwhile, solar tender activity reached 3GW during the quarter, rising 100% quarter-on-quarter but falling 68% year-on-year. A total of 4GW of solar projects were auctioned in Q1 2026, down 47% from the previous quarter and 64% lower year-on-year. 
In March 2026, Mercom reported that India had added 119GW of solar module manufacturing capacity and more than 9GW of solar cell manufacturing capacity during 2025. 
According to the firm’s ‘State of Solar PV Manufacturing in India 2026’ report, the country’s cumulative solar module manufacturing capacity had reached approximately 210GW by December 2025, while cumulative solar cell manufacturing capacity stood at around 27GW. 

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On the same day as Anker Solix’s Solarbank 4 Pro launch, Bluetti is also bringing new balcony power plant solutions to the market. Unveiled at an event in Paris, the Bluetti Balco Series consists of three products: the Balco 260, the Balco 500, and the Balco Transfer Hub.
The Balco 260 and Balco 500 are classic storage systems for balcony power plants, similar to those we have seen from various other manufacturers. They combine MPPT controllers, inverters, modularly expandable battery storage (up to 15 or 30 kWh), and safety technology into one smart system.
In accordance with balcony power plant regulations, both systems feed up to 800 W into the home grid. Management can be handled via the "S Meter," which magnetically attaches to the electricity meter. According to the manufacturer, a total output of up to 2,300 W is possible for the Balco 260 when combining battery storage and grid power, while the Balco 500 can reach up to 3,680 W.
On the input side, the Bluetti Balco 260 can accept up to 2,400 W of PV power via its four MPPTs. Thanks to its high-voltage MPPT design (70 to 470 V), the Balco 500 can even handle up to 4,300 W of PV power. For safety, Bluetti utilizes a 5VA flame-retardant housing, a redundant system design, and a predictive intelligent Battery Management System (BMS) designed to proactively minimize operational risks.
Also new is the Bluetti Balco Transfer Hub. This is a grid-tied controller that allows traditional portable power stations from various manufacturers to be used as storage for a balcony power plant. According to Bluetti, this solution also offers scenario-based applications, AI optimization, and cross-platform interoperability, providing house and apartment owners with a simple and flexible way to reduce electricity costs using solar energy. Information regarding availability and pricing is not yet available. However, interested parties can register on this promotion page to secure a 20% discount and a €500 voucher.
Bluetti

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Takoma Park Library Adds 117 Rooftop Solar Panels  Source of the Spring
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The Grand Egyptian Museum (GEM) has taken an important step toward sustainability with the inauguration of a new solar power station at the museum complex in Egypt. The project was officially launched in the presence of Egypt’s Minister of Tourism and Antiquities, Sherif Fathy, along with representatives from the United Nations Development Programme, the Government of Japan, and several Egyptian environmental and industrial authorities.
The new solar station is part of Egypt’s broader strategy to increase the use of renewable energy and support sustainable development goals under Egypt Vision 2030. By adopting clean energy solutions at one of the world’s most famous cultural landmarks, the museum is showing how heritage preservation and environmental responsibility can work together.
The solar project includes panels installed around the museum’s perimeter as well as advanced Building-Integrated Photovoltaic (BIPV) technology placed on the Solar Boats Building. The current capacity of the station is 200 kilowatts, supplying nearly 12 percent of the museum’s electricity needs. Officials have also confirmed plans to expand the system’s capacity to 1 megawatt in the future.
According to project officials, the solar station is expected to generate around 168,000 kilowatt-hours of clean electricity annually. It will also help reduce carbon dioxide emissions by nearly 79 tons every year, contributing to Egypt’s climate goals and efforts to lower environmental impact.
One of the unique features of the project is its focus on maintaining the museum’s architectural beauty. Some solar cells were specially designed to resemble marble so they could blend naturally with the museum’s exterior. This is considered the first use of such visually integrated solar technology in Egypt.
During the inauguration ceremony, officials highlighted that the Grand Egyptian Museum is becoming more than a cultural destination. It is also evolving into a center for innovation and climate action. The museum is currently preparing a carbon footprint report to monitor its environmental performance and identify ways to improve sustainability further.
The project was developed through international cooperation between Egypt, the UNDP, and the Government of Japan. Officials noted that such partnerships are essential in addressing global climate challenges. As the museum prepares to welcome millions of visitors from across the world, the GEM is emerging as a leading example for museums and cultural institutions in Africa and the Middle East by combining history, technology, and sustainability.
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Inox Clean buys Boviet Solar’s 3-GW N Carolina module factory  Renewables Now
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The renewable energy partnership now spans nine US states with solar and battery storage projects, as Meta races to power its AI-hungry data centers with clean energy.
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Meta and D.E. Shaw Renewable Investments (DESRI) have locked in 850 MW of new power purchase agreements for 2026, bringing the total contracted capacity between the two companies to roughly 2,575 MW across nine US states.
The new deals cover projects in Oklahoma (500 MW), Texas (200 MW), and Mississippi (150 MW). DESRI expects about 1,110 MW of the overall portfolio to break ground this year, a construction wave the company says will create hundreds of jobs across the states involved.
The projects span solar generation and battery storage. Meta is locking in long-term contracts to buy electricity from solar farms that DESRI builds and operates, with batteries attached to store excess power for later use. These are utility-scale installations spread across multiple states.
DESRI has also committed to scholarship funding for high-school students pursuing clean-energy careers in the states where these Meta-backed projects are located.
Meta has made public commitments to match its electricity usage with renewable energy purchases. These PPAs don’t mean Meta’s data centers run directly on solar panels. They mean Meta is buying enough renewable energy credits and contracted power to offset its grid consumption on paper, and increasingly, to directly supply facilities where grid connections allow it.
Corporate power purchase agreements have become the primary mechanism through which Big Tech funds new renewable energy construction. A developer like DESRI builds a solar or wind farm, and a corporate buyer like Meta agrees to purchase the output at a fixed price over a long-term contract. That guaranteed revenue stream is what makes the projects financeable.
The 1,110 MW of projects expected to begin construction this year from this single partnership illustrates the scale and speed at which this buildout is happening. That’s over a gigawatt of new capacity moving from contract to shovel in a 12-month window.
The renewable energy partnership now spans nine US states with solar and battery storage projects, as Meta races to power its AI-hungry data centers with clean energy.
Share
Meta and D.E. Shaw Renewable Investments (DESRI) have locked in 850 MW of new power purchase agreements for 2026, bringing the total contracted capacity between the two companies to roughly 2,575 MW across nine US states.
The new deals cover projects in Oklahoma (500 MW), Texas (200 MW), and Mississippi (150 MW). DESRI expects about 1,110 MW of the overall portfolio to break ground this year, a construction wave the company says will create hundreds of jobs across the states involved.
The projects span solar generation and battery storage. Meta is locking in long-term contracts to buy electricity from solar farms that DESRI builds and operates, with batteries attached to store excess power for later use. These are utility-scale installations spread across multiple states.
DESRI has also committed to scholarship funding for high-school students pursuing clean-energy careers in the states where these Meta-backed projects are located.
Meta has made public commitments to match its electricity usage with renewable energy purchases. These PPAs don’t mean Meta’s data centers run directly on solar panels. They mean Meta is buying enough renewable energy credits and contracted power to offset its grid consumption on paper, and increasingly, to directly supply facilities where grid connections allow it.
Corporate power purchase agreements have become the primary mechanism through which Big Tech funds new renewable energy construction. A developer like DESRI builds a solar or wind farm, and a corporate buyer like Meta agrees to purchase the output at a fixed price over a long-term contract. That guaranteed revenue stream is what makes the projects financeable.
The 1,110 MW of projects expected to begin construction this year from this single partnership illustrates the scale and speed at which this buildout is happening. That’s over a gigawatt of new capacity moving from contract to shovel in a 12-month window.
All content is for informational purposes only and does not constitute investment advice. CryptoBriefing does not provide recommendations to buy, sell, or hold any asset or contract. See our Disclaimer & Risk Disclosure.
© Decentral Media and Crypto Briefing® 2026.
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Summary Finance Minister Bilal Azhar Kayani told the National Assembly no under-invoicing cases were detected in used vehicle or solar panel imports in five years, highlighting FBR reforms.
ISLAMABAD (APP) – Minister of State for Finance Bilal Azhar Kayani on Friday informed the National Assembly that no cases of under-invoicing had been detected in the commercial import of used vehicles or solar panels during the last five years, according to data shared by the Federal Board of Revenue (FBR).
Responding to questions during the question hour, the minister clarified that while concerns regarding under-invoicing in certain import categories existed in general, no specific case involving companies in the import of used vehicles or solar panels had been reported.
He informed the House that under SRO 1895(I)/2025 issued on September 30, 2025, the government had allowed the commercial import of five-year-old used vehicles until June 30, 2026. However, he noted that no commercial imports of used vehicles under this SRO had taken place so far.
The minister added that, as a result, there were currently no cases of under-invoicing in the used car import category, and the matter may be treated as “nil” in terms of reported violations.
Regarding solar panels, Bilal Azhar Kayani stated that Customs field formations have not detected any case of under-invoicing in solar panel imports during the past five years on the basis of direct evidence. He said the government is implementing a range of reforms under the Federal Board of Revenue to address evasion risks, including faceless customs systems, post-clearance audits, and enhanced risk management systems aimed at ensuring data-driven identification of high-risk consignments.
The minister said these measures are designed to minimize human interaction in customs assessments and improve transparency in trade facilitation and enforcement.
On supplementary questions, he also highlighted the government’s broader relief and energy policies, noting that the Benazir Income Support Programme (BISP) currently has a budget of Rs. 716 billion, benefiting more than 10 million deserving families, primarily through women beneficiaries.
He further said the government continues to promote solar energy under its energy transition strategy, adding that net metering policies remained intact for existing consumers, while new users were being shifted to net billing mechanisms to ensure system sustainability.
Bilal Azhar Kayani said despite fiscal constraints, the government has provided targeted subsidies and relief measures to protect citizens from economic pressures while maintaining fiscal discipline.
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Through this million asset purchase, Inox Clean acquires 3 GW of operational TOPCon solar module manufacturing capacity in the United States, aligning with the “Make in America, For America” initiative.
Boviet Solar’s factory in Greenville, North Carolina, United States
Image: Boviet Solar
From pv magazine India
Inox Clean Energy Ltd (Inox Clean), the integrated renewable energy platform of the Inoxgfl Group, has announced the acquisition of the North Carolina assets of Boviet Solar through its wholly owned subsidiary, Inox Solar Americas, LLC.
The acquisition adds 3 GW of operational TOPCon solar module manufacturing capacity to Inox Clean’s portfolio, along with a binding agreement to acquire another 3 GW of TOPCon cell manufacturing capacity expected to be commissioned by December 2026. The transaction marks one of the largest acquisitions of U.S. renewable energy assets by an Indian company.
The asset purchase establishes Inox Clean among the largest Indian integrated renewable energy manufacturing platforms in the United States and represents a strategic entry into one of the world’s fastest-growing solar markets.
“The acquisition also unlocks significant economic benefits under the U.S. government’s domestic manufacturing incentives. Products manufactured at the facility will qualify for Section 45X incentives, supporting profitability while reducing exposure to tariffs and policy-related risks through a localized manufacturing footprint,” Inox Clean said.
“This acquisition provides a ready and scalable platform in a high-margin, policy-supported market,” the company added. “With cell shortages and Section 45X incentives creating favorable market conditions, we are well-positioned to build an integrated U.S. manufacturing ecosystem. The transaction has been executed at an enterprise value of approximately $750 million for the module and cell manufacturing assets. The deal meets all criteria under our valuation framework, reinforcing our disciplined approach to growth.”
Over the past nine months, Inox Clean has completed nine acquisitions across the independent power producer (IPP) and solar cell and module manufacturing sectors in India and international markets, including Vibrant Energy, SkyPower, SunSource Energy, and Wind World India, expanding its clean energy portfolio.
Inox Clean is targeting 11 GW of integrated solar manufacturing capacity and 10 GW of operational IPP capacity by FY2028 across India and key international markets, including the United States and Africa.
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Germany solar research institute International Solar Energy Research Center (ISC) Konstanz has said it will be able to operate a fully integrated, industrially equipped solar cell and module pilot line by the third quarter of 2026. 
According to the institute, its cleanroom is now being equipped with high-temperature processing systems supplied by centrotherm alongside automation systems from Jonas & Redmann. The systems are intended to support oxidation, diffusion, CVD and PALD processes on current industrial wafer formats.  
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Once commissioned in Q3 2026, ISC Konstanz said it will be capable of carrying out the full range of cleanroom processes for solar cell development in-house for the first time.  
The expanded pilot line includes a batch wet bench from RENA Technologies, PVD equipment from Von Ardenne, high-temperature and fast-firing furnaces from centrotherm, an extended ASYS printing line with copper print curing furnace, a laminator from Burkle, a stringer from Mondragon Assembly capable of supporting back-contact solar cell technology, and a HALM table LED IV-measuring system for tandem applications. 
The company said the expansion will also support the re-establishment of a service model giving industrial partners direct access to its infrastructure for technology development, process validation and prototype manufacturing. 
“With our new infrastructure, we are bringing industrial development and applied research even closer together again,” said Radovan Kopecek, co-founder of ISC Konstanz.  
“Companies can now work directly on modern industrial equipment at ISC Konstanz, develop and optimise processes together with our team, and even manufacture small pilot series for specialised applications.” 
The cleanroom upgrade marks the final stage of a broader infrastructure build-out that has taken place in phases over recent months. 
ISC Konstanz said industrial partners will be able to use the equipment under a rental model, carry out prototype processing within ISC facilities, access contract research services and participate in hands-on training programmes for industrial-scale manufacturing equipment. 
The institute also said the expanded line would support small-series manufacturing of specialised solar cells and modules with a higher degree of automation than previously available. 
Recently, ISC Konstanz partnered with Indian renewable energy company Celloraa Energy to support the development of a 1.2GW tunnel oxide passivated contact (TOPCon) solar cell production facility in Gujarat, India. 
Under the agreement, ISC Konstanz was appointed as the primary technology and qualification partner for the project, supporting Celloraa Energy’s plans to expand domestic solar cell manufacturing capacity in India. 

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Indian rooftop solar company Fujiyama Power has commissioned the first phase of a 2GW solar module manufacturing facility in Ratlam, Madhya Pradesh. 
Once fully operational, Fujiyama Power said the facility will be capable of producing 2GW each of solar modules, batteries and inverters. The first phase of the facility will operate with annual production capacity of 1GW under a single-shift model before ramping up in phases. The company said full capacity utilisation is expected by the fourth quarter of 2027. 
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Fujiyama is also setting up a 1.2GW tunnel oxide passivated contact (TOPCon) solar cell manufacturing facility at Ratlam, which will complement its existing capacities. The project is expected to strengthen the company’s positioning in the residential rooftop market, including opportunities linked to the Government of India’s rooftop solar incentive, the PM Surya Ghar Muft Bijli Yojana. 
Following the commissioning of the first phase of the Ratlam module facility, Fujiyama’s total solar panel manufacturing capacity has risen to 3,568MW. 
“The commissioning of our solar panel manufacturing facility at Ratlam marks an important milestone in Fujiyama’s growth journey and manufacturing expansion strategy. This greenfield project strengthens our ability to serve the rapidly growing domestic rooftop solar market with higher manufacturing scale, improved operational efficiencies and greater control across the value chain,” Chairman, Pawan Kumar Garg, Fujiyama Power said. 
The company said commissioning timelines for inverter and battery manufacturing lines at the same site had been delayed after it opted to incorporate newer lithium-ion battery technologies into the project. It added that geopolitical developments also affected equipment supply timelines during the execution phase. 
Fujiyama expects its inverter manufacturing line to be commissioned in the first quarter of 2027, with machinery already delivered to the site. The battery manufacturing line is scheduled for commissioning in the second quarter of 2027 after machinery orders were placed. 
Earlier this year, the company commissioned its 1GW solar cell manufacturing plant in Dadri, Uttar Pradesh. The facility produces mono passivated emitter rear cell (PERC) solar cells compliant with India’s domestic content requirement (DCR), supporting the country’s push to localise solar manufacturing. The plant was developed with a total investment of INR3 billion (US$32.7 million). 

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The panels will power the Hampstead Heath lido systems, saving more than 11.5 tonnes of carbon emissions a year – equivalent to powering 15 average-sized homes.
 
At a glance
Who: City of London Corporation.
 
What: The Corporation has completed a project to install 163 new solar panels on the roof of Parliament Hill Lido on Hampstead Heath.
 
Why: The new system will help power the lido’s water filtration pumps, reducing operational energy costs, and cut annual carbon emissions by more than 11.5 tonnes. The project forms part of City of London Corporation’s Climate Action Strategy.
 
When: The Parliament Hill Lido is located on London’s Hampstead Heath.
 
The City of London Corporation has completed a project to install 163 new solar panels on the roof of Parliament Hill Lido on Hampstead Heath.

It comes as the Corporation, which manages Hampstead Heath as a registered charity, continues to cut carbon emissions on its sites to reach net zero as part of its Climate Action Strategy. 
 
 
The new panels, on the roof of the main Grade II-listed Lido building, complement an earlier set installed in 2018.

The new system will help power the Lido’s water filtration pumps, reducing operational energy costs, and cut annual carbon emissions by more than 11.5 tonnes, equivalent to powering 15 average-sized homes a year.

 
“Our Climate Action Strategy stretches far beyond the Square Mile. With 11,000 acres of open space under our stewardship, we’re uniquely placed to help drive environmental change right across London,” said Chris Hayward, policy chairman at the City of London Corporation.

“This installation shows how we’re making our strategy a reality – cutting carbon, reducing energy costs, and delivering long-term sustainability for the benefit of all Londoners.
“The Lido is an iconic London landmark, and these solar panels will help future-proof it for generations to come, while preserving its historic character.”

Parliament Hill Lido is one of London’s best-loved outdoor swimming venues, attracting nearly 300,000 visitors each year. Since opening in 1938, it has seen a series of sensitive upgrades to enhance the experience for users while protecting its heritage value.

Hampstead Heath is one of the capital’s most iconic open spaces, attracting over 10 million visits a year. It is home to 800-plus species of flora and fauna and a Site of Metropolitan Importance for Nature Conservation.
“This installation shows how we’re making our strategy a reality – cutting carbon, reducing energy costs, and delivering long-term sustainability for the benefit of all Londoners”
“It won’t just be visitors who’ll be soaking up the sun in the future. This installation shows our determination to manage the Heath sustainably and sensitively, so it continues to meet the needs of users while tackling the urgent challenge of climate change,” said chair of the City of London Corporation’s Hampstead Heath, Highgate Wood and Queen’s Park Committee, alderman Gregory Jones.

“I’d particularly like to thank the whole team responsible for delivering this great project, demonstrating that renewable energy production can be secured sympathetically on historically sensitive buildings.”

The scheme forms part of the City Corporation’s Climate Action Strategy, which commits the organisation to achieving net zero carbon emissions in its own operations by 2027, and across its full value chain and the Square Mile by 2040 – a decade ahead of national targets.


 
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The global energy transition depends on solar photovoltaic (PV) power displacing fossil fuels to deliver projected climate and air quality benefits. However, aerosol pollution from co-located coal plants actively suppresses PV energy production. Here a global, facility-level dataset shows that aerosols reduced global PV generation by 5.8% in 2023 (111 TWh). From 2017 to 2023, annual aerosol-induced PV energy losses from existing systems were, on average, equivalent to one-third of the energy added by new PV installations. In China, aerosols caused the largest PV energy losses worldwide, reducing national PV generation by 7.7% in 2023. The corresponding annual loss-to-growth ratio averaged 38% and frequently exceeded 50%. Despite continued coal expansion, PV energy losses have declined by 1.4% yr⁻¹ since 2017 owing to stricter emission controls. By contrast, the USA, where co-location of solar and coal plants is limited, experienced only 3.1% aerosol-induced PV loss. Given the slow pace of global coal phase-out, these results reveal a constraint on solar performance that, if unaccounted for, could lead to a systematic overestimation of the transition’s contribution to climate and air quality goals.
Limiting global warming to 1.5 °C requires a 45% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions from 2010 levels by 2030 and net-zero emissions by 2050^1,2. This demands a rapid transition from fossil fuels to renewable energy. Since 2011, renewables have expanded at an average annual rate of 6.1%, supplying 29.1% (8,440 TWh) of global electricity in 2023³. Expansion potential varies across technologies: hydropower⁴, geothermal⁵ and tidal⁶ energy face environmental and geographic constraints, whereas solar and wind offer greater scalability with fewer such obstacles⁷. Solar photovoltaic (PV) technology has been leading this transition, driven by advances in cell materials⁸, automated manufacturing⁹, large-scale deployment¹⁰ and sharply declining costs. Over the past decade, PV module prices have declined sharply, making it the most cost-effective electricity source¹¹, supported by subsidies, tax incentives and favourable trade policies¹². In 2023, PV accounted for 75% of the 510-GW increase in global renewable capacity¹³. This rapid growth has prompted projections of substantial climate and air quality benefits, assuming that new PV capacity displaces coal-fired generation^14,15. Yet, the extent to which renewables displace fossil fuels in practice remains unclear^16,17. Clarifying whether PV expansion translates into fossil fuel displacement and delivers the anticipated benefits is essential for tracking progress towards net-zero targets.
Solar PV offers a low-carbon energy pathway, with life-cycle greenhouse gas emissions that are an order of magnitude lower than those of coal-fired generation equipped with carbon capture and storage¹⁸. From 2009 to 2019, global PV deployment avoided an estimated 1.3 Gt of carbon dioxide (CO₂) emissions. Meeting 40% of electricity demand with PV from 2020 to 2060 could mitigate up to 205 Gt (ref. ¹⁹). Rooftop PV alone could reduce global temperatures by 0.05–0.13 °C by 2050 through avoided emissions¹⁴. Substituting fossil fuels with PV reduces air pollutants such as sulfur dioxide (SO₂), nitrogen oxides (NO_x) and fine particulate matter (PM_2.5)^20,21, bringing immediate health benefits²², particularly in regions with high baseline pollution¹⁵. These climate and air quality gains depend on the extent to which solar electricity substitutes for rather than supplements fossil-fuel-based generation. While full substitution maximizes mitigation, even apparent supplementation can confer benefits by offsetting the expansion in fossil fuel use that would otherwise accompany rising energy demand. Conversely, if fossil fuel use remains unchanged or expands alongside renewables, the transition’s effective mitigation potential is reduced²³. In practice, this displacement process has proven highly inefficient, with evidence suggesting that globally, over six units of renewable energy may be needed to displace one unit of fossil energy¹⁷. This inefficiency largely reflects rising overall energy demand and systemic dependence on fossil-fuel infrastructure, which reduces the substitution between renewable and fossil energy. This dependence is further reinforced by persistent policy incentives for fossil fuels: despite frequent pledges, fossil fuel subsidy reforms since 2016 have often proved short lived and, in most major subsidising countries, support for coal has either remained unchanged or increased²⁴.
This coal resurgence not only sustains emissions but also impairs solar performance by degrading air quality as the atmospheric emissions from coal-fired power generation directly reduce surface irradiance. When these coal plants are brought online as backup during periods of low solar output, their emissions can further intensify pollution and prolong dimming episodes, delaying the rebound of surface irradiance even when meteorological conditions improve²⁵. This reduction occurs as particles scatter and absorb incoming radiation^26,27,28, a direct effect that has been found to lower annual PV energy yields by over 20% in heavily polluted regions such as eastern China and northern India^26,29. Aerosols also modify cloud microphysics, altering cloud reflectivity and coverage, and further suppress surface irradiance through indirect effects²⁹. These losses risk disrupting a positive feedback loop, in which solar deployment should reduce fossil fuel reliance and improve air quality, which in turn enhances PV performance to reinforce the energy transition^15,26. This mechanism presents a diagnostic opportunity: trends in aerosol-induced PV losses may indicate whether solar is displacing coal or merely expanding alongside it. Detecting this signal remains challenging. Most existing studies^26,27,28,29 analyse broad irradiance patterns without accounting for spatial and temporal variation in PV deployment. Such approaches are insufficient because PV siting reflects not only solar resource availability but also policy incentives, infrastructure and land-use constraints^30,31. Capturing the signal of fossil displacement therefore requires a spatially explicit, facility-level analysis that links atmospheric conditions to actual trends in PV energy generation and losses.
The application of machine learning to high-resolution Earth observation data, such as from Sentinel-2, has produced global¹⁰ and national inventories of PV systems^32,33,34. While these datasets successfully map the spatial distribution of facilities, their utility for tracking energy trends is fundamentally limited by ambiguity in the detected panel footprints. This ambiguity can result in estimation errors of up to a factor of two and varies substantially with surface type (Supplementary Figs. 2 and 3). Detection is most accurate in deserts, where dark panels contrast sharply with bright terrain. Accuracy decreases in mountainous regions, where PV arrays follow complex topography, and in heterogeneous land-use areas such as croplands, fishponds and greenhouses, where spectral mixing is more common. When aggregated over large areas, footprint and classification errors introduce regional biases to estimates of PV generation. These mapping inaccuracies are a primary obstacle to quantifying PV energy generation and losses from aerosols, particularly those associated with fossil fuel combustion, thus obscuring the signal needed to detect fossil fuel displacement.
To overcome this limitation, a three-step framework to generate a global dataset tracking facility-level PV energy generation and calculate losses driven by clouds and aerosols (Fig. 1) has been developed. The framework achieves comprehensive coverage of PV installations that were operational as of early 2024 by identifying candidate sites from a combination of existing inventories, crowd-sourced data and a custom machine learning model applied to global satellite imagery. It produces unprecedented spatial accuracy through a dedicated segmentation model, the Segment Anything Model (SAM)³⁵, to precisely extract PV facility footprints. This facilitates the reliable estimation of facility-level energy generation and the losses from clouds and aerosols by integrating the footprints with atmospheric reanalysis data and a validated PV model. This high-fidelity dataset allows the quantification of aerosol-induced energy losses as a diagnostic signal of interaction between solar deployment and fossil fuel displacement. The signal is used to evaluate whether, where and to what extent solar expansion is offsetting coal-fired generation, and to assess whether the projected climate and air quality benefits of the solar transition are being realized in practice.
a, Step 1: global identification of PV facilities. An initial inventory is created by integrating OSM data, regional databases^10,32,33 and a custom-trained CNN applied to global-scale Sentinel-2 imagery. API, application programming interface. b, Examples of initial PV polygons (inventory updated to early 2024) overlaid on Google Earth satellite imagery; polygon boundaries are shown as purple outlines, illustrating substantial false positives and boundary errors. c, Step 2: precise extraction of PV footprints. For each facility, Meta’s SAM is applied to high-resolution imagery to isolate the active panel arrays, shown as purple shading. d, Step 3: facility-level energy estimation. The improved footprints are integrated with reanalysis climate data in a validated energy model to estimate time series of electricity generation and the distinct losses from clouds and aerosols. Example plots show total percentage losses from 2016 onwards. e, A global map of PV energy losses from clouds and aerosols (%). This map visualizes the aggregated losses from clouds and aerosols across all facilities in 2023, illustrating one key output of the final database.
The three-step approach (Methods) produced a global dataset of 140,945 PV facilities, each with facility-level estimates of energy generation and losses from clouds and aerosols, with aerosol-induced losses representing the direct radiative effects of aerosols suspended in the atmosphere. In 2023, these data show that average PV energy losses reached 26.9% of potential output under optimal conditions, comprising 21.1% from clouds and 5.8% from aerosols. For global generation of 1,911 TWh, this amounts to a global energy loss of 515 TWh, equivalent to the annual output of 84 medium-sized (1 GW) coal plants operating at a typical capacity of 70%. Loss rates varied regionally (Supplementary Fig. 6 and Supplementary Tables 3–5) due to differences in climate and pollution; China, the world’s largest PV generator, experienced a 28.0% total loss rate, of which 7.7% was from aerosols, compared with a 22.7% total loss with a 3.1% aerosol loss in the USA. At the facility level, a single site in Qinghai Province, China (36.09° N, 100.49° E), lost 3.6 TWh in 2023 alone, equivalent to 0.7% of global PV output losses.
This facility-level dataset overcomes a key limitation of earlier assessments that relied on spatially uniform assumptions of PV distribution. The impact of this methodological improvement is substantial. For instance, previous studies estimated that aerosols reduce PV output in China by as much as 20–25% (refs. ^26,29), as those analyses assessed potential solar irradiance without considering the actual distribution of PV facilities. By contrast, constrained by the precise locations of operational systems, our analysis finds a national average loss of 7.7%. By accurately linking PV footprints to electricity generation, our facility-level data resolves this overestimate and provides a robust foundation for assessing energy trends and detecting the signal of fossil fuel displacement.
Aerosol-induced losses from the existing PV fleet are equivalent to nearly one-third of the annual energy generated by new PV installations globally, representing a magnitude not previously quantified and unexpectedly high. While clouds are the dominant source of atmospheric reduction in insolation, aerosols have a disproportionate impact in densely populated, industrialized regions where PV deployment is concentrated. Between 2017 and 2023, new PV installations added 246.6 TWh of generation per year on average, while aerosol-related losses from existing systems reached 74.0 TWh annually. To compare these quantities across regions and years, we use the loss-to-growth ratio (({R}_{mathrm{LG}})), defined as the annual aerosol-induced energy loss from existing systems divided by the annual energy generated from new PV capacity (Fig. 2). Globally, ({R}_{mathrm{LG}}) averaged 30.0% during the study period (Fig. 2b), varying substantially across regions (Fig. 2c–e and Supplementary Fig. 7); lower values indicate the delivery of more net energy to the grid and thus a greater contribution to decarbonization.
a, The global distribution of PV energy losses due to atmospheric aerosols in 2023, aggregated from facility-level simulations and mapped at 0.5° × 0.5° resolution. b–e, The annual PV loss-to-growth ratios (({R}_{mathrm{LG}})) from 2017 to 2023 for the globe (b), China (c), the USA (d) and Europe, including the UK (e). In each panel, the lines represent annual energy from new PV additions (orange) versus aerosol-induced losses from existing systems (blue), with the corresponding ({R}_{mathrm{LG}}) value for each year as a bar. In b–e, the annual totals are derived from facility-level simulations across independent PV facilities (global dataset n = 140,945 facilities). The error bars indicate ±10% relative model uncertainty associated with climate reanalysis and energy modelling. f, A country-level ranking of total aerosol-induced PV energy losses in 2023, showing absolute losses (TWh, bottom axis) and losses as a percentage of total PV generation (top axis).
In China, aerosol-induced losses remain substantial, reducing national PV generation by 7.7% in 2023 due to persistent pollution and dense PV deployment (Fig. 2f). In 2023, the nation produced 793.5 TWh of PV electricity, representing 41.5% of the global total, while its 61.3 TWh of aerosol-induced losses accounted for a disproportionate 54.9% of the global total, exceeding that of all other countries combined. The North China Plain continues to be the primary hotspot³⁶, but increasing losses are also observed in western and southern regions as PV installations expand geographically. Over the full study period, China’s annual ({R}_{mathrm{LG}}) averaged 38.4%, exceeding 50% in three consecutive years and peaking at 62.1% in 2021 before falling to 26.0% by 2023 (Fig. 2c). The years of high ({R}_{mathrm{LG}}) (2018–2021) coincided with slower PV deployment, initially triggered by subsidy reductions and regulatory uncertainty under the mid-2018 ‘531’ policy³⁷, and later compounded by coronavirus disease 2019-related supply-chain disruptions in 2020³⁸. A subsequent policy-driven rebound in PV growth from late 2021 improved national performance and reduced the ({R}_{mathrm{LG}}) accordingly.
In the USA, aerosol-induced losses are considerably lower than in other major PV regions, reducing national PV generation by 3.1% in 2023 (Fig. 2f). That year, the USA accounted for 18.1% of global PV generation but only 9.6% (10.7 TWh) of global total aerosol-induced losses (Fig. 2d). This smaller burden reflects both natural and anthropogenic factors, with overall aerosol loading lower than in other major PV regions. In the western USA, dust storms and more frequent wildfires reduce surface irradiance, though their impacts are episodic and spatially limited³⁹. By contrast, the eastern regions experience more persistent aerosol pollution from population centres and industrial activities. Although the West benefits from higher solar irradiance (5–7 kWh m⁻²day⁻¹), the East, with lower irradiance (4–5 kWh m⁻²day⁻¹), hosts a larger share of PV installations due to greater electricity demand and previous stronger policy incentives. Continued PV expansion in these relatively low-aerosol areas has kept the national ({R}_{mathrm{LG}}) consistently below the global average throughout the study period, reaching a minimum of 12.8% in 2023 (Fig. 2d). Europe (including the UK) shows moderate losses, with an average annual ({R}_{mathrm{LG}}) of 28.4% (Fig. 2e), close to the global mean.
Paradoxically, while suffering the most from total aerosol-induced losses, China is the only major PV-producing region showing evidence of a sustained decline in these losses. This decline may indicate the early stages of a positive feedback between solar deployment and air quality improvement, whereby cleaner air conditions enhance solar performance and further support renewable expansion. The specific drivers of this trend are analysed in the next section. The annual aerosol-induced energy losses from 2013 to 2023 across a fixed network comprising all facilities operational by year-end 2023 (Fig. 3) is simulated to isolate the direct impact of aerosols from changes in PV network expansion. This approach enables an assessment of aerosol effects that is independent of PV network growth. The results confirm that, despite having the highest absolute losses, China is the only region exhibiting a consistent decline, with its losses falling by 0.96 TWh yr⁻¹ (−1.4% annually). By stark contrast, losses in the USA and Europe trended upwards by 0.15 TWh (1.5%) and 0.12 TWh yr⁻¹ (1.3%), respectively, despite their early adoption of renewable energy. India continues to experience persistently high losses due to severe air pollution, with no clear trend. The modest global decline of −0.72 TWh yr⁻¹ (−0.6%) was therefore driven almost entirely by the improvements in China. These findings suggest that while this positive feedback is anticipated to accelerate the energy transition^15,26, this virtuous cycle has yet to materialize at a global scale, even during the recent period of rapid PV expansion.
a–d, Standardized annual energy losses (in TWh) from aerosols between 2013 and 2023, estimated under fixed PV network conditions, for China (a), the USA (b), Europe, including the UK (c) and India (d), aggregated from facility-level datasets. The error bars indicate ±5% relative uncertainty associated with energy modelling. The solid lines show linear regression fits; the shaded bands indicate the 95% confidence interval of the fitted trend. In a, the global trend, normalized to China’s mean value, is shown as a grey hatched band. The use of a fixed network (based on all facilities operational by year-end 2023) isolates the impact of changing atmospheric conditions from the effects of network expansion.
China’s unique status as both the region most affected by aerosol-induced PV losses and the only one showing a sustained improvement warrants an investigation into the underlying drivers. Our analysis of aerosol composition, sector-specific attribution, temporal pollutant trends and spatial correlations identifies coal-fired power generation as the dominant factor. First, the composition of performance-reducing aerosols points to coal. Sulfate aerosols, formed through the oxidation of SO₂ (a primary coal emission), account for 46.2% (28.3 TWh annually) of total aerosol-related PV losses (Fig. 4a). Carbonaceous aerosols, also partly from coal combustion, contribute an additional 11.3 TWh (18.4%). While dust contributes about one-third of total losses, its impact is highly localized to desert regions with a smaller share of PV capacity. A regional breakdown confirms the pervasive influence of coal, showing that sulfate aerosols dominate losses across most of China: from 8.9 TWh yr⁻¹ in the North China Plain to 9.1 TWh yr⁻¹ in arid, dust-dominated regions (for example, Northwest and Inner Mongolia Plateau) (Fig. 4b). To further isolate the role of coal emissions, a sector-specific attribution experiment was conducted using the GEOS-Chem chemical transport model (Methods). This analysis shows that 29.0% of aerosol-induced PV energy losses in China can be attributed to coal-fired power plants, reinforcing the dominant influence of coal-related aerosols identified in Fig. 4.
a, The contribution of major aerosol types to total PV energy losses. The losses are classified into sulfate, carbonaceous and dust aerosols, which together account for 99% of total aerosol-related losses, excluding only sea salt. The error bars indicate ±10% relative model uncertainty associated with climate reanalysis and energy modelling. b, The regional breakdown of PV output losses by aerosol type. The surface area of each slice of the pie chart is proportional to its total aerosol-induced PV losses in that region, while its elongation indicates the dominance of sulfate aerosols, of which coal combustion is a main source. c–e, Trends in effective values of atmospheric pollutants at PV sites from 2013 to 2023, based on a fixed 2023 PV network. Consistent declines are shown in AOD (c), tropospheric NO₂ column amounts (d) and PBL SO₂ column amounts (e).
Second, the observed decline in pollutants over China’s PV sites does not reflect a coal phase-out, but rather the effectiveness of aggressive emission controls on a growing coal fleet⁴⁰. Coal-fired power plants are major sources of PM_2.5, SO₂ and NO₂ pollution in China^41,42, and our analysis of effective pollutant values (Methods) confirms that these stricter standards have had a measurable impact on the atmospheric pollutants that reduce solar generation. From 2013 to 2023, effective aerosol optical depth (AOD) declined by 0.0052 yr⁻¹ (1.7% annually), tropospheric NO₂ by 9.1 (times)10¹³ molecules per square centimetre per year (2.4%) and planetary boundary layer (PBL) SO₂ by 1.4 (times)10¹⁴ molecules per square centimetre per year (1.4%) (Fig. 4c–e). This trend is paradoxical as it occurred while China’s coal-fired electricity output increased from 4,093 TWh to 5,857 TWh⁴³. This was achieved through fleet-wide modernization involving the phasing out of older, inefficient plants^44,45 while simultaneously accelerating the construction of new capacity, which reached its highest level in nearly a decade in 2024⁴⁶. To further quantify this dynamic, we analysed the relative contributions of ultralow-emission (ULE) retrofits and coal-plant retirements to the decline in pollutant emissions over China’s PV regions. Using unit-level data on coal-plant capacities, retrofit progress and retirements, we reconstructed annual SO₂ emissions from 2014 to 2023 (Supplementary Note 3). The results show that ULE retrofits account for 91% of the total SO₂ reduction from the coal-power sector during this period, while coal retirements contribute 9%. These findings confirm that the observed improvements in atmospheric conditions above China’s PV sites were driven primarily by emission-intensity reductions from widespread ULE adoption rather than by large-scale coal phase-out.
Third, the spatial distribution of PV losses in China mirrors that of its coal-fired power capacity⁴⁷. Facility-level data reveal widespread co-location of PV installations and coal plants, extending into western desert regions often perceived as dedicated hubs for renewable expansion (Fig. 5). The influence of coal in these areas is further confirmed by the composition of the aerosol-induced losses; even where dust is the dominant aerosol type, sulfate-driven losses remain high (Fig. 4b). To quantify this spatial relationship, we aggregated coal capacity and aerosol-induced PV losses to a 1.0° × 1.0° grid and calculated the bivariate Moran’s I statistic⁴⁸ on the top 30% of grid cells for each variable. This analysis yielded a significant positive correlation (I = 0.5654, P = 0.007), confirming that the highest-capacity coal regions tend to coincide with the areas of greatest PV loss. By contrast, the USA exhibits limited co-location of its solar and coal capacity (Extended Data Fig. 1). This geographical separation is also a key factor behind the nation’s low ({R}_{mathrm{LG}}), a finding supported by the corresponding Moran’s I statistic, which shows no spatial correlation (I (approx) 0). Supplementary Fig. 8 further quantifies this spatial relationship by showing that, across different ranges of annual generation (({E}_{mathrm{year}}) < 10 GWh, 10–100 GWh and >100 GWh), PV facilities in China are consistently located much closer to coal-fired power plants, with distance distributions peaking at 20–30 km, than those in the USA, which peak beyond 100 km.
The map shows the spatial distribution of coal-fired power plants (purple markers) and PV facilities (blue markers) across China. PV capacity is estimated using a constant solar capacity factor of 18%. The yellow grid cells highlight the top 30% of locations where high-capacity coal and PV installations are co-located, indicating regions with high potential for interaction between the two energy sources.
Our findings reveal a previously unquantified physical interaction that constrains the global solar energy transition: aerosol emissions from coal-fired power plants directly reduce the energy output of PV installations to a degree that measurably alters regional energy yields. While many recent studies document the accelerating expansion of PV capacity as a primary metric of progress^10,49, our work shows that this physical dynamic represents a fundamental challenge to realizing the associated climate and air quality benefits that are widely projected under idealized scenarios^14,15. Using a global, facility-level dataset, it becomes clear that this effect is real: every year, aerosol-related losses are equivalent to almost one-third of the energy generated by newly installed PV capacity worldwide. In China, where coal and solar have expanded most rapidly in parallel, this ratio can exceed 50%. These estimates capture only the direct radiative effects of aerosols, while additional indirect impacts through aerosol–cloud interactions, which generally lead to negative radiative forcing by increasing cloud reflectivity and persistence⁵⁰, would probably further increase solar energy losses, meaning that estimates presented in this study represent a conservative lower bound. This demonstrates that the effectiveness of the energy transition cannot be evaluated by installed capacity alone, but must also account for the spatially embedded, performance-degrading interactions with the remaining fossil fuel fleet.
The persistence of coal power thus constitutes more than just a market-based challenge for renewables⁵¹; it creates a direct physical barrier that degrades solar asset performance. The global 5.8% aerosol-induced reduction in PV generation demonstrates that air pollution is actively eroding realized climate benefits and reducing the value of new solar investments. To further quantify how this barrier influences the efficiency of the solar transition, the ({R}_{mathrm{LG}}) is introduced as a comparative metric that evaluates the resilience of regional solar expansion. ({R}_{mathrm{LG}}) highlights a considerable, previously hidden cost of the co-existence of coal and solar infrastructure, a cost most evident in China, which suffers from the highest ratio among major economies (average of 38.4% and peaks exceeding 60% in recent years). This high loss is primarily driven by coal emissions, with sulfate aerosols from coal-derived SO₂ accounting for 46.2% of all aerosol-induced PV losses in the country.
China’s situation, however, is particularly instructive because it is also the only major region where these performance losses are in sustained decline. Our fixed-network analysis shows that from 2013 to 2023, aerosol-induced losses in China fell by 1.4% annually, a trend that contrasts sharply with the rising losses in the USA (1.5% yr⁻¹) and Europe (1.3% yr⁻¹). This improvement occurred not because of a coal phase-out, as coal capacity continued to expand in China⁴⁶, but is instead a direct cobenefit of stricter pollutant emission standards^44,45. The evidence for this is multifaceted: the decline in losses corresponds directly with falling pollutant levels over PV sites, including effective AOD (−1.7% yr⁻¹), tropospheric NO₂ (−2.4% yr⁻¹) and PBL SO₂ (−1.4% yr⁻¹); and a significant positive spatial correlation (I = 0.5654) connects coal capacity to these losses. This provides direct evidence that while cleaning up existing coal plants yields partial benefits, a full phase-out would remove this performance barrier much more decisively. The importance of this spatial coal–solar interaction is further illustrated by the contrasting case of the USA. The USA exhibits the lowest ({R}_{mathrm{LG}}) because there is limited co-location of its solar and coal fleets. This geographical separation results in negligible spatial correlation between coal capacity and aerosol-induced PV losses. The US case demonstrates that the aerosol-induced performance barrier is not an inherent property of solar power, but is a direct consequence of the proximate operation of coal-fired power plants, a barrier that would be removed by their phase-out.
Looking forward, the physical interaction between coal-based aerosols and solar PV performance is likely to become an increasingly critical constraint on the global energy transition. A fundamental challenge for grids with high renewable penetration is the need for dispatchable power to maintain stability during periods of low solar output⁵². This stability challenge is being amplified by accelerating electricity demand, which the International Energy Agency projects will grow by nearly 4% annually through 2027, driven by industrial expansion, electrification and the rapid growth of artificial intelligence applications⁵³. Together, these pressures for both grid reliability and rising demand are promoting many economies to extend their reliance on coal. In China, this dynamic is evident in the continued approval of new coal plants as backup capacity for renewables⁵⁴, a trend also exported abroad through Chinese and Indian investment in coal projects in Africa⁵⁵. In the near term, the persistence of large coal capacity remains a challenge for the solar transition: while existing coal plants continue to provide backup power, their operation sustains fossil dependence and constrains the benefits of solar deployment. Retrofitting coal plants to ULE standards can reduce SO₂, NO_x and PM_2.5 emissions per facility; however, given China’s vast coal capacity, total emissions remain among the highest globally, and these retrofits do little to mitigate CO₂ emissions⁵⁶. Ultimately, faster coal retirement is essential for achieving the objectives of the energy transition, while coordinated policy measures should address short-term system reliability without reinforcing long-term fossil dependence. Our results highlight the direct physical cost of this dependence: the same coal plant retained or newly built will continue to degrade the performance of the solar assets intended to replace them. A complete assessment of future energy pathways must therefore account for these cross-sectoral dynamics, integrating climate, air quality and energy system models to ensure that the expected benefits of renewable investments are fully realized.
A three-step framework was developed to estimate facility-level PV energy generation and its associated major losses from clouds and aerosols globally. This framework introduces two main advances over previous methods: it combines multiple sources to assemble a more complete global PV dataset and it improves accuracy by decoupling the initial identification of PV sites from the precise extraction of panel footprints.
A key challenge is that global-scale detection is inherently difficult because PV installations must be distinguished from diverse non-PV surfaces, often leading to boundary errors. For this reason, separating the initial detection from the final segmentation improves accuracy over single-stage models that perform both tasks simultaneously. Our process therefore begins with Step 1: identifying candidate PV locations using a combination of existing inventories^10,32,33, crowd-sourced records and a convolutional neural network (CNN) classifier trained on global-scale Sentinel-2 imagery.
This is followed by Step 2, where, in contrast to broad detection, segmentation applied to satellite imagery with identified PV sites is more tractable, as panels show distinct visual and spectral contrast with their surroundings. Therefore, high-resolution imagery from confirmed sites was processed using the SAM³⁵, developed by Meta, to extract precise panel boundaries using a ‘few-shot’ learning approach. To evaluate the spatial accuracy of the resulting dataset, comparisons were then made with two existing global PV inventories, as described in Supplementary Table 1.
In Step 3, these high-accuracy panel footprints were integrated with atmospheric data from the Modern-Era Retrospective Analysis for Research and Applications (MERRA-2) re-analysis in a validated PV model. This allowed the estimation of a time series of facility-level electricity generation, and the distinct losses caused by clouds and aerosols for each of the 140,945 facilities in our database.
We first identified potential PV facilities using OpenStreetMap (OSM), a global crowd-sourced geospatial digital database. While OSM data are extensively used for mapping and spatial analysis, its data quality and completeness vary by region. In particular, PV facilities may be mapped at the construction area level, often overestimating panel coverage and including planned rather than operational sites. Candidate PV facilities were extracted by querying OSM with the attributes: power=plant, plant:source=solar and plant:method=photovoltaic. Global queries were regionally partitioned and run in parallel on UK’s JASMIN supercomputer, which provided the necessary computational power for large-scale geospatial processing.
To supplement OSM, we integrated publicly available PV datasets generated by machine learning-based analyses of satellite imagery. One such resource is the global inventory by Kruitwagen et al.¹⁰, which used a U-Net model trained on Sentinel-2 imagery to detect PV installations worldwide as of 2019. Their dataset consists of polygons outlining each identified PV site. From these polygons, we extracted the central coordinates and bounding box of each potential site to guide the next stage of our analysis.
For China, Feng et al.³³ employed a random forest classifier on Google Earth Engine using 2020 Sentinel-2 imagery, training province-specific models to improve detection accuracy. This dataset captured older installations missing from global inventories but introduced more false positives. After clustering the 10-m resolution GeoTIFF PV masks into individual facilities, we extracted each PV facility’s central coordinates and bounding information. For India, we incorporated the PV dataset from Ortiz et al.³², which combined a U-Net detection model with hard negative mining to improve detection accuracy. This database includes 1,363 validated and grouped PV installations updated to 2020.
To identify new or previously unrecorded PV installations, we trained a U-Net model with a VGG16⁵⁷ backbone on Sentinel-2 imagery. A total of 12,000 PV installations were manually annotated to build a globally representative training dataset. To improve detection across diverse environments, the model was trained on PV sites situated in deserts, croplands, mountains, floating systems and built environments. Further details on model architecture, training data preparation and deployment are provided in Supplementary Note 1.
By integrating the OSM records, published PV inventories and detections from our custom model, we ultimately identified 326,423 potential PV polygons globally.
Estimating PV generation from satellite imagery requires accurately extracting the panel area that receives solar irradiance. This, in turn, depends on the precise extent of the PV panels themselves, excluding non-panel features and empty spaces often included within the facility polygons derived above. Including these non-PV areas leads to overestimates of panel surface area. Applying uniform scaling factors to correct such errors is unreliable because these ratios are neither constant nor reliably correlated with location or facility size.
The SAM³⁵ is a foundation model trained on 11 million images and 1.1 billion masks. Designed to generalize effectively across diverse image datasets, it can be adapted to new imagery and unfamiliar objects with little or no additional training. It generalizes to new imagery using prompting techniques, where user-provided inputs (such as text descriptions or spatial information) guide the model’s segmentation. SAM consists of an image encoder that computes embeddings, a prompt encoder that processes user inputs and a lightweight mask decoder that generates segmentation masks. SAM has been applied across diverse domains, including three-dimensional object segmentation, medical imaging and crop disease identification⁵⁸. Here, SAM was used to segment PV arrays from pre-identified locations on satellite images, using spatial prompts in the form of bounding boxes and individual points to initiate the segmentation process (Supplementary Fig. 3).
Red, green and blue (RGB) composites were generated from Sentinel-2’s 12-band imagery. At this local scale, PV panels and their immediate surroundings are readily distinguishable in an RGB composite. Areas of persistent cloud cover were filled by incorporating PlanetScope RGB imagery in those areas. With daily global coverage at a spatial resolution of 3 m, PlanetScope data offered more opportunities for cloud-free views and improved segmentation accuracy, especially for smaller PV arrays. High-resolution Google imagery was used where it was available and up to date.
Spatial prompts included bounding boxes and point annotations placed on PV panels. Segmented PV facilities were manually reviewed to ensure accurate boundaries. False detections and non-PV features were corrected using additional prompts if necessary. This two-stage approach ultimately produced segmented PV polygons for all sites previously identified. To consolidate closely located polygons into coherent PV facilities, those within 50 m of one another were merged. This final aggregation resulted in a comprehensive global database of 140,945 distinct PV facilities.
To determine the installation time of each PV facility, we applied a time series classification approach using the sktime machine learning framework⁵⁹. Monthly composites of Sentinel-2 top of atmosphere reflectance from 2017 to 2024 were generated, and for each PV polygon, the mean reflectance across all pixels and spectral bands was extracted. This resulted in a multivariate time series representing the temporal reflectance signature of each facility. A manually labelled training dataset was assembled using PV sites with known installation times, identified from high-resolution satellite imagery. A supervised classifier was trained to detect installation events on the basis of changes in reflectance patterns over time. The model was optimized using a large and diverse training set to distinguish true PV installation signals from common pre-installation changes, including grading, land clearing and temporary construction activities. The trained model was applied to all detected PV polygons to estimate installation time. As full data were not available until 2017, all PV facilities installed before 2017 were assigned an installation time of 2017. Example reflectance trajectories used to support classification are shown in Supplementary Fig. 4, with corresponding visual examples of detected facility expansion shown in Supplementary Fig. 5.
The theoretical electricity generation of each identified PV facility was estimated using the following equation:
where E is the potential alternating current (a.c.) power output (kW), I is the available solar irradiance at the PV surface (kW m⁻²), (A) is the effective PV panel area (m²) derived from our database, k is the coefficient accounting for system-level energy losses and C is the module conversion efficiency from solar radiation to electricity.
The parameter I depends on both atmospheric conditions and the facility’s geographic orientation and tilt. Atmospheric conditions, including aerosol loading and cloud cover, can alter the balance of direct and diffuse solar radiation that reach the Earth’s surface, influencing the global horizontal irradiance (GHI). The orientation and tilt angle of PV panels are optimized to maximize solar exposure over seasonal and diurnal cycles.
GHI was estimated using MERRA-2⁶⁰, the latest atmospheric reanalysis produced by NASA’s Global Modeling and Assimilation Office. MERRA-2 provides an hourly, globally gridded dataset (0.5° × 0.625°) of atmospheric and surface variables, including radiation, temperature, relative humidity and wind speeds. MERRA-2 assimilates aerosol measurements from spaceborne observations, representing their interactions with other physical processes. For this analysis, the surface incoming shortwave flux (SWGDN) from MERRA-2 M2T1NXRAD data products was used. SWGDN represents GHI, including both direct and diffuse components.
For a PV facility with fixed orientation and tilt angle, the optimal tilt was estimated from its latitude⁶¹. To translate GHI on a horizontal surface into the solar irradiance available on a tilted panel, GHI was decomposed into direct normal irradiance (DNI) and diffuse horizontal irradiance (DHI)⁶²
where (theta) is the solar zenith angle. The diffuse fraction ((mathrm{DHI}/mathrm{GHI})) is determined using the ratio of global to extraterrestrial irradiance on a horizontal plane, as implemented in the open-source pvlib library⁶³. Using GHI components and PV geometry, irradiance on optimally tilted panels was derived using pvlib.
The effective panel area (A) of a PV depends on both the overall facility footprint and the spacing between individual panel arrays. This relationship is commonly expressed using a ground coverage ratio, defined as the ratio of panel-covered area to total facility land area: (A,=,{A}_{{rm{L}}},times ,r), where ({A}_{{rm{L}}}) is the total land area and (r) is the ground coverage ratio. Applying this calculation directly to PV polygons derived from traditional machine learning methods can be problematic, as satellite-based detections often overestimate panel areas by including non-PV features. By contrast, this two-stage search and extraction approach substantially improves detection accuracy by excluding non-PV elements during the extraction phase. This improved detection enables the use of a uniform ground coverage ratio (r) globally to estimate the active panel area.
The coefficient (k), which accounts for system-level losses, follows a model validated by Saxena et al.⁶⁴ on a large sample of operational PV panels. This factor includes losses from suboptimal PV orientation (0.5%), mismatch in power points (0.3%), d.c. cabling (2%), a.c. cabling (0.5%), d.c.-to-a.c. conversion (2.2%), module downtime (0.5%), soiling by dust and snow (3.5%), and transformer inefficiencies (0.9%). Collectively, these factors amount to a total loss of 10.09%.
The conversion efficiency (C) represents the fraction of incident solar energy converted into electricity by the solar cells. For conventional silicon-based technologies, this efficiency typically ranges between 18% and 22%. A fixed value of 20% was used in this study.
To isolate the direct climate impacts that reduce PV power generation, MERRA-2’s SWGDN estimated under clear-sky and clean-sky conditions is used. SWGDNCLR represents shortwave flux under clear-sky (cloud-free) conditions. Under such conditions, one can estimate facility-level PV power output solely for clear-sky scenarios:
Although MERRA-2 does not directly provide incoming shortwave flux under clean-sky (aerosol-free) conditions, it can be approximated by scaling the total SWGDN with the ratio of clean-sky net shortwave flux (SWGNTCLN) to full-sky net shortwave flux (SWGNT). This approach removes aerosol contributions and yields ({E}_{mathrm{clean}}), the estimated PV output in the absence of aerosols
By comparing the baseline output (E) (from all-sky conditions) with ({E}_{mathrm{clear}}) (no clouds) and ({E}_{mathrm{clean}}) (no aerosols), cloud and aerosol impacts can be separately quantified. Finally, the total climate-induced loss (L) can be computed using the following equation:
To illustrate the structure of the resulting dataset, Supplementary Fig. 9 shows histograms of estimated annual generation per facility in 2023 for the globe and major regions (China, the USA, Europe, including the UK, India and the rest of the world).
To evaluate the impact of atmospheric pollution on PV generation, aerosol conditions were quantified by calculating effective AOD for each PV facility. Major anthropogenic aerosol emissions originate from fossil-fuel combustion, particularly from coal-fired and other thermal power plants, industrial processes, vehicular transport and residential heating, as well as from biomass burning. Natural sources include desert dust, sea salt and volcanic activity⁶⁵. AOD was obtained from the MERRA-2 reanalysis (M2T1NXAER collection), which provides hourly AOD at 550 nm on a 0.625° × 0.5° grid. The accuracy of the MERRA-2 AOD product has been extensively validated in previous global and regional studies⁶⁶. These evaluations demonstrate close agreement with AERONET and MODIS observations, with typical correlations of 0.7–0.9 and root mean square error values below 0.2, confirming that MERRA-2 AOD provides reliable and stable estimates suitable for global and regional analyses. To further assess consistency in our study, we performed an effective-AOD trend analysis for all PV facilities in China using the 1-km Multi-Angle Implementation of Atmospheric Correction (MAIAC) AOD product⁶⁷ (Extended Data Fig. 2). The MAIAC-based results show a comparable declining trend to that derived from MERRA-2, with a reduction rate of −0.0085 yr⁻¹ (−2.9% yr⁻¹) during 2013–2023. This difference can be partly attributed to MAIAC’s finer spatial resolution, which better captures local aerosol gradients around coal plants and aligns with the PV–coal distance distribution shown in Supplementary Fig. 8, where most PV facilities are located 20–30 km from the nearest coal power plant, below the MERRA-2 grid spacing. These findings indicate that the AOD decline and its implications for PV performance are robust across independent datasets.
To represent trace-gas pollutants, we further derived tropospheric NO₂ and PBL SO₂ column densities from the spaceborne Ozone Monitoring Instrument (OMI). For NO₂, we used the OMI_MINDS_NO2d product and extracted the ‘ColumnAmountNO2TropCloudScreened’ variable, which represents daily tropospheric vertical column densities (molecules per square centimetre) filtered for high-quality observations with cloud fractions below 0.3 and solar zenith angles under 85°. For SO₂, we used the OMSO2e product, which provides daily global estimates of SO₂ column density in the PBL at 0.25° × 0.25° resolution.
We computed effective pollutant values to reflect their contribution to generation reductions at each PV facility. Two weighting factors were applied: (1) clear-sky irradiance weighting, which assigns greater weight to pollutants present during high-irradiance conditions (for example, daytime and summer), and (2) PV area weighting, which accounts for the relative size of each facility. The effective pollutant value was computed as
where P_i is the pollutant value (AOD, tropospheric NO₂ or PBL SO₂) in pixel i, I_i is the clear-sky irradiance and A_i is the PV panel area.
Aerosol source attribution was carried out using GEOS-Chem version 14.6.3⁶⁸ in the aerosol-only configuration, which simulates the transport and removal of aerosol species from anthropogenic and natural sources (sulfate, nitrate, ammonium, black carbon, organic carbon, dust and sea salt) using archived oxidant fields. Anthropogenic emissions used in the GEOS-Chem simulations are taken from the Community Emissions Data System (CEDS) inventory (version 2025-04), which provides an internally consistent global emissions dataset widely used in chemistry-transport modelling. China-specific inventories such as the Multi-Resolution Emission Inventory for China (MEIC) are also available and may offer more detailed representations of recent emission changes associated with national clean-air policies⁶⁹. Simulations were conducted at 0.5° × 0.625° horizontal resolution with 47 vertical layers extending to 0.01 hPa and were driven by MERRA-2 meteorological fields provided at the same native resolution (0.5° × 0.625°, 72 levels). The model was run for the year 2023, following a 6-month spin-up for the global (2° × 2.5°) simulation and an additional 6-month spin-up for the nested China simulation (0.5° × 0.625°). Lateral boundary conditions for the nested domain were updated every 3 h from the corresponding 2° × 2.5° global run.
Two categories of simulations were performed (Supplementary Fig. 10). The base simulation included all anthropogenic and natural emissions and represents total atmospheric aerosol loading. To isolate the contribution of coal-related and other energy-sector emissions, a set of sector-specific sensitivity simulations was conducted in which emissions from individual power-sector sources were activated within China while all other emissions remained switched off. These simulations used identical emission inventories and model configurations for the global and nested domains to ensure consistency of sources across spatial scales (Supplementary Table 6).
To relate the GEOS-Chem attribution to PV energy losses, monthly baseline AOD and energy-sector AOD were computed for all MERRA-2 grid cells in China for 2023. The monthly fraction of total AOD attributable to energy-sector emissions was then aggregated across all PV facilities using a weighted mean, where the weight for each facility equals its aerosol-induced energy reduction for that month. This weighting accounts for site-specific capacity, monthly irradiance and effective AOD, providing a direct link between sector-attributed aerosol loading and PV energy losses.
Further information on research design is available in the Nature Portfolio Reporting Summary linked to this article.
The Sentinel-2 data used in this study are freely available from the European Space Agency through the Copernicus programme and can be accessed via the Copernicus Data Space Ecosystem (https://dataspace.copernicus.eu). The MERRA-2 reanalysis data (including M2T1NXRAD for radiation and M2T1NXAER for aerosols) are publicly available from the NASA Goddard Earth Sciences Data and Information Services Center (https://disc.gsfc.nasa.gov/). The OMI data products for NO₂ (OMI_MINDS_NO2d) and SO₂ (OMSO2e) are also publicly available from the NASA Goddard Earth Sciences Data and Information Services Center. The Global Coal Plant Tracker database is maintained by Global Energy Monitor and is publicly available for download (https://globalenergymonitor.org/projects/global-coal-plant-tracker/). The primary dataset of global, facility-level PV generation and losses developed and analysed in this study is available via Zenodo at https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.18794230 (ref. ⁷⁰).
The code used in this study is publicly available via GitHub at https://github.com/ray-climate/global-pv-generation-loss-dataset. The version corresponding to this publication (version 1.0) is available via Zenodo at https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.18844891 (ref. ⁷¹).
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This work was undertaken on JASMIN, the UK’s collaborative data analysis environment (https://www.jasmin.ac.uk). Planet Labs provided the high-resolution PlanetScope imagery through their Education and Research Program. R.S., A.C.P and R.G.G. were partly supported by the UK Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) through the National Centre for Earth Observation (grant no. NE/R016518/1). F.Y. was supported by the NERC and BBSRC AgZero+ research programme (grant no. NE/W005050/1) and the NERC CPEO programme (grant no. NE/X006328/1).
National Centre for Earth Observation, Atmospheric, Oceanic and Planetary Physics, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK
Rui Song, Basudev Swain & Roy G. Grainger
Mullard Space Science Laboratory, Department of Space and Climate Physics, University College London, Holmbury St Mary, Surrey, UK
Rui Song & Jan-Peter Muller
National Centre for Earth Observation, Department of Geography, University College London, London, UK
Feng Yin
National Centre for Earth Observation, School of Physics and Astronomy, University of Leicester, Leicester, UK
Adam C. Povey
School of Management, University of Bath, Bath, UK
Chenchen Huang
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R.S. conceived the study, developed the primary methodology, performed the main data analysis and visualization, and wrote the original paper. R.S. and F.Y. jointly developed the global PV database. B.S. performed the GEOS-Chem simulations and contributed to the data analysis. A.C.P., J.-P.M. and R.G.G. contributed to the development of the analytical framework and conducted additional analysis. C.H. contributed to the conceptualization of the study and provided input on the policy implications of the findings. All authors contributed to reviewing and editing the final paper.
Correspondence to Rui Song, Jan-Peter Muller or Roy G. Grainger.
The authors declare no competing interests.
Nature Sustainability thanks Quentin Paletta and the other, anonymous, reviewer(s) for their contribution to the peer review of this work.
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Spatial distribution of PV installations (blue markers) and coal-fired power plants (purple markers) across 1.0° × 1.0° grid cells. In contrast to China, the small number of yellow grid cells illustrates the limited co-location of these energy sources in the United States.
Temporal trends of effective aerosol optical depth (AOD) from 2013 to 2023 derived using the 1-km MAIAC product for all mapped PV facilities in China. The MAIAC results show a declining trend in effective AOD, with a reduction rate of −0.0085 yr⁻¹ (−2.9 % yr⁻¹), consistent with the pattern obtained from the MERRA-2 dataset reported in the main text.
Supplementary Notes 1–3, Figs. 1–10 and Tables 1–6.
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41893-026-01836-5
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Brett Davidsen, News10NBC: “What has that peace been replaced with?
Starowitz: “A lot of trucks and dirt and noise and the view is pretty much gone.”
A bird’s-eye view shows how far the solar arrays stretch. Byron is not alone.
A second solar farm is also underway in Genesee County in nearby Elba and Oakfield. This one is permitted for 4,650 acres. A third one is under review in the town of Alabama and is projected to be about 1,200 acres.
Davidsen: “When you look out here, what do you see?
Matt Landers: “Sadness.”
Landers is the Genesee County manager.
“I have a hard time bringing myself to drive through here to see what was once beautiful farmland and countryside is now being overtaken by these solar projects. It’s kind of an apocalyptic view when you drive through here,” Landers said.
The appeal of Genesee County to investors is the flat, treeless terrain, willing landowners and the proximity to high voltage power lines. Landers says the towns were powerless to stop the projects. They’re all being overseen by the Office of Renewable Energy Siting (ORES) created by the state legislature to specifically speed up the review and permitting processes, essentially removing any local control.
“They can set aside any local laws, local moratoriums, local zoning. They can set it aside and put a site where they want to put it. And that’s what’s happened here,” Landers said.
The state says a lot of input is considered before a permit is granted.
“On the whole, we look at all the comments, all the feedback, all the impact that may be associated with the generation resource. And it’s our job, again via statute and the laws that we’re carrying out, to make sure we strike the best balance that we can,” Jessica Waldorf said.
Waldorf is the ORES chief of staff. She says consolidating the process at the state level ensures protections are built in.
“We’re in it to make sure we protect environmental resources and that we also make sure that we’re protecting, ultimately, the ratepayers that are going to be both paying for and benefiting from the resources that come through our process,” Waldorf said.
Clean energy advocates say the large solar projects are critical for creating much needed supply to the state’s aging power grid. Marguerite Wells of ACE NY says the state needs to build as fast as it can.
“We need to build as fast as we can and the fastest electrons we can bring online right now are solar and wind,” Wells said.
But will it mean lower energy bills?
“The honest truth is that nothing right now is going to make our bills go down. It’s how much can we prevent them from going up steeply,” Wells said.
The solar projects do provide financial benefits to towns and counties through tax agreements, job creation and a spike in local spending. But Landers says he’d gladly give all of that up. Genesee County is now spending money on public relations firms and outside legal counsel to try to slow the pace of future solar projects.
Starowitz says she fears it may be too late.
“We put our life here. We raised our family. We like it here. We liked our quietness. And I’m not sure how much longer we would want to stay with this,” Starowitz said.
There is a bill in the state Senate and Assembly that would give local municipalities the final say on if a renewable energy power plant can be sited there.
Click here to read the full bill
Those bills have not made it out of the energy committee.

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Solar has been described as a “shining star” of the EU’s clean transition, but scientists warn that coal pollution is damaging renewables’ capacity to slash emissions.
New research led by the University of Oxford and University College London (UCL) mapped and assessed more than 140,000 solar photovoltaic (solar PV) installations worldwide.
The study, published in the science journal Nature Sustainability, uses satellite and atmospheric data on air pollution to calculate how much sunlight is lost and how this reduces electricity generation.
Researchers found that pollution from coal-fired power plants “significantly reduces” the energy output of solar PV installations, particularly where these are expanding side by side.
The study warned that aerosols (tiny particles suspended in the air) reduced global solar electricity by 5.8 per cent in 2023.
This is equivalent to 111 terawatt-hours of lost energy – the amount generated by 18 medium-sized coal-fired power plants. To put that into perspective, one terawatt-hour is about the same as the annual electricity consumption of 150,000 EU citizens, according to Our World in Data.
Between 2017 and 2023, new PV installations added an average of 246.6 TWh of electricity each year, while aerosol-related losses from existing systems reached 74 TWh annually – equivalent to nearly one-third of the gains from new capacity, the report adds.
Researchers argue that this highlights a “previously unrecognised interaction” between fossil fuel use and renewable energy, where emissions from one system directly impact the performance of the other.
“We’re seeing rapid global expansion of renewable energy, but the effectiveness of that transition is lower than often assumed,” says lead author Dr Rui Song.
“As coal and solar expand in parallel, emissions alter the radiation environment, directly undermining the performance of solar generation.”
Coal is considered the dirtiest, most polluting way of producing energy, and is one of the main drivers of global warming. Despite renewables overtaking fossil fuel power for the first time last year, many countries are still clinging to coal power plants despite their environmental harm.
Just last month, Italy announced it was postponing the permanent shutdown of its coal-fired power plants until 2038, 13 years later than its initial deadline. Environmental groups and the centre-left opposition criticised the move, with the leader of the Europa Verde green party, Angelo Bonelli, accusing the government of “climate neglect”.
Coal plants emit fine pollution particles that scatter and absorb sunlight, which reduces the amount that reaches nearby solar panels. Dr Song explains that air pollution doesn’t just block sunlight, but also changes clouds which can cut solar power even further.
“That means the real impact is likely to be bigger than we’ve measured, so we may be overestimating how much solar power can contribute to reducing emissions if we do not get pollution from coal power under control,” he adds.
This effect was particularly evident in China, where solar and coal capacity have expanded in parallel and are often co-located. Regions with high coal capacity aligned closely with areas experiencing the greatest solar PV losses.
China is the world’s largest solar producer, and generated 793.5 TWh of solar PV electricity in 2023 (41.5 per cent of the global total). But it also experienced the largest losses from aerosols, with total output reduced by 7.7 per cent.
Researchers estimate that around 29 per cent of aerosol-related solar PV losses in China come specifically from coal-fired power plants.
Co-author Dr Chenchen Huang, from the University of Bath in the UK, says the report’s findings send a “clear warning” that overlooking pollution-induced solar energy losses can lead to a “systematic overestimation of renewable energy output by governments, businesses and the broader community”.
“To stay on track, policies must account for this hidden drag and shift fossil fuel subsidies away from coal,” Dr Huang adds.


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New Zealand utility Meridian Energy has received consent to build a 120MW solar PV project alongside a planned battery energy storage system (BESS).
The approval was granted for a 280-hectare site in the Manawatū region of New Zealand’s North Island. The Bunnythorpe Solar Farm will deploy around 250,000 solar modules and is expected to generate around 225GWh of power annually. It will be co-located with a BESS which has already secured approval.
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Meridian said the project forms part of a NZ$3 billion (US$1.7 billion) investment it will make through 2030 in developing new renewable energy capacity across New Zealand. The Bunnythorpe project will be Meridian Energy’s second solar PV plant in New Zealand, following the 130MW Ruakākā Energy Park that began construction in October 2025.
Meridian Energy is also developing a 400MW site on the North Island through a joint venture with Wellington-headquartered Nova Energy. Construction on that project began earlier this month.
“Solar energy is playing an increasingly important role in New Zealand’s electricity generation, and we’re excited to bring this to Manawatū,” said Guy Waipara, Meridian GM of development.
In October 2024, the New Zealand government introduced a bill to fast-track ten utility-scale solar projects across the country, including significant multi-hundred MW sites. Since, the country’s utility-scale solar market has heated up significantly. In addition to Meridian Energy’s activity, Genesis Energy has broken ground on a 136MWp project in Edgecumbe, Bay of Plenty; Foresight group acquired a 300MW solar-plus-storage platform, its first sector investment in New Zealand; and Contact Energy raised US$316 million to develop large-scale solar and other renewable energy projects.

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The facility, the company’s first on a closed landfill, went online in April.
CHARLOTTESVILLE, VA (CVILLE RIGHT NOW) — Last month, Dominion Energy’s newest solar facility went online, producing enough to power 750 homes at its peak.

It is one of over 70 solar facilities Dominion has in Virginia, but what excites the company about its newest facility is its location — on top of the Ivy Landfill.
“This is an exciting new trend for us,” Dominion spokesperson Tim Eberly told Cville Right Now. “We’re generating clean energy on land that has little to no other options and has an environmentally-challenged past. So, it’s really exciting to pair that eco-friendly use with a former landfill.”
Ivy Landfill Solar is Dominion’s first solar facility on a closed landfill. The project was acquired from the Community Power Group in January 2023, which had been developing the project for at least a year up to that point.

Dominion broke ground on the facility in March 2025, and just over a year later, the site went online in mid-April of this year.
The three-megawatt site feeds directly into Dominion’s electric grid, with Eberly saying its customers in the surrounding area will “most likely be the ones taking advantage of this power generation.”
The plant is a part of Dominion’s commitment to clean energy and is a part of what Eberly described as a much larger transition in the energy industry. Dominion opened its first solar facility a decade ago and now spots the third-largest solar fleet among utility companies in the country.

The new facility also helps Dominion stay in compliance with the Virginia Clean Economy Act, which Eberly said is the state law “guiding our clean energy transition.” The law’s provisions require the development of both large and small-scale solar facilities, as well as the development of solar facilities on previously developed land. The development of facilities on landfills satisfies those requirements.
Still, Eberly made it clear Dominion is excited about this new initiative, regardless of any legal requirements. The company is currently developing three more facilities on landfills in the Commonwealth, located in Henrico County, Middlesex County and James City County respectively.
The initiative comes amidst “unprecedented” energy demand, which Eberly said hasn’t been seen since World War II. He credited this in part to the large cluster of data centers in Northern Virginia, the rise of electric vehicles and the influx of manufacturing facilities in the Commonwealth.

“In the next 20 years, we’re expecting energy demand in Virginia to double,” Eberly said. “So, in order to meet that demand, we have to generate twice as much energy. And so, what we’re planning to do over the next two decades is to essentially do that — to add 33 gigawatts of new power generation all across Virginia.”
Long-term, Eberly said the plan is for 53%, or 17.5 gigawatts, of that new energy production to come from solar. All-in-all, he called solar “a significant part of the big picture” when it comes to Dominion’s plan to address the energy demand in Virginia.
As Dominion continues to combat the rising energy needs in Virginia, Eberly made it clear that renewable energy will continue to play a major role for Dominion.
“We’re all in on solar energy, and offshore wind and renewables in general,” Eberly said.

Jackson Hephner is a staff writer at Cville Right Now. Reach him by email at jhephner@cvillemedia.com.
City Manager Sam Sanders said the current situation is creating life-threatening public health concerns.
The facility, the company’s first on a closed landfill, went online in April.
Forecasts call for temperatures in the 80s on Saturday and in the 90s on Sunday.
The announcement came Wednesday, just two days after the VDH announced a case of measles in a child in the region.
A developer is hoping the county will rezone property at the intersection of Route 29 North and Carrsbrook Dr. to allow him to build five four-story apartment buildings.

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The Missouri Public Service Commission has approved an agreement filed by Union Electric Company…aka Ameren Missouri…along with the PSC Staff and Renew Missouri Advocates granting Ameren a Certificate of Convenience and Necessity.
The certificate allows Ameren to construct, own and operate the Reform Project consisting of a 250 megawatt solar generation facility in Callaway County.
The project will be constructed on property already owned by Ameren.
Other parties in the case, including the Office of the Public Counsel and the Sierra Club did not object to the agreement.
In the approval, the Commission notes that Missouri continues to face a need for additional electric generation to replace aging resources and meet increasing demand associated with economic development opportunities.
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The integration of solar photovoltaic (PV) systems with electric vehicle (EV) charging infrastructure is emerging as a critical pathway toward decarbonising transport while alleviating grid constraints
Recent academic literature, combined with real-world pilot projects, provides a comprehensive view of both the technical maturity and the remaining engineering challenges of solar-powered EV charging systems.
Both ‘An integrative review of standalone solar powered EV charging stations: Standards, policies, design aspects, and future directions’ in Science Direct’s Energy Reports journal, and Springer Nature’s ‘Solar powered electric vehicle charging system: a comprehensive review’ converge on a core architectural framework: solar-powered EV charging systems are typically classified into off-grid, grid-connected, and hybrid configurations. 
A central design challenge identified in both studies is system sizing and optimisation. Effective operation depends on maximum power point tracking (MPPT), DC–DC converter topology, and battery integration, all of which must be tailored to local irradiance profiles and charging demand. Battery storage is a critical enabler, typically operating at 85–95% efficiency, ensuring continuity of supply despite solar intermittency.
A key technical trend identified within both papers is the shift toward integrated energy management systems that coordinate PV generation, storage, and charging demand. Research highlights the growing role of smart grids and control algorithms in balancing supply-demand mismatches and mitigating grid impacts. 
Performance modelling demonstrates the sensitivity of system output to environmental variables. For example, increasing solar irradiance from 400 to 1000W/m2 can yield ~47% higher PV output, directly improving EV charging rates. Another important trend is the development of DC microgrid-based charging architectures, which reduce conversion losses and improve system efficiency compared with conventional AC-coupled designs.
However, the papers also highlight the technology’s remaining challenges: Solar intermittency and diurnal variability, voltage instability and grid integration issues, and land-use constraints for large-scale PV deployment.
Both papers emphasise the strong environmental case for solar-powered charging. Substituting grid electricity with solar PV can reduce CO2 emissions by up to 75%, depending on the regional energy mix. From an economic perspective, the systems exhibit higher upfront capital costs (PV panels, inverters and storage) but lower lifecycle costs, due to reduced energy purchases and maintenance. Notably, solar-powered charging supports energy independence, particularly in regions reliant on imported fossil fuels.
Both works indicate the emergence of several consistent trends. The first is the integration of battery storage and hybrid PV-grid systems to overcome intermittency and ensure reliability. The second centres around decentralised and off-grid deployment: Solar EV charging is increasingly positioned as a solution for remote and weak-grid regions, enabling electrification without extensive infrastructure upgrades. 
Additionally, advanced control strategies such as AI-driven demand response and smart scheduling, are being explored to maximise solar utilisation and minimise grid stress. There is also growing emphasis on design standards, simulation tools and techno-economic modelling to accelerate deployment and ensure interoperability. 
Recent innovations in this space provide tangible validation of these research findings, particularly in extreme environments. A 2026 pilot reported by Easee and Subaru demonstrated fully off-grid solar EV charging in Canada’s sub-Arctic. Using portable PV panels and battery storage, the system successfully charged an EV despite harsh winter conditions and limited sunlight. Charging was achieved at around 25% of a standard 7kW charger rate and the system operated without any grid connection.
Similarly, one UK-based example is the model deployed by British sustainable energy company Gridserve, which develops solar farms alongside EV charging hubs. According to the company, a single acre of solar panels in England can generate enough electricity annually to power approximately one million miles of electric vehicle driving. Gridserve operates a growing network of “Electric Super Hubs” and electric forecourts capable of ultra-fast charging, with power outputs of up to 350kW. The network has expanded to numerous motorway service areas, helping provide long-distance EV charging across the country.
This highlights increasing deployment of solar-integrated charging hubs, reflecting a broader trend toward decentralised, renewable-powered infrastructure. These systems are being positioned as a means to reduce grid congestion and align EV charging with renewable generation profiles.
Despite this progress, several unresolved issues remain in regards to solar-powered EV charging:
Addressing these challenges will require coordinated advances in power electronics, energy storage, and digital control systems.
Though challenges remain, recent advances indicate the technology offers clear advantages in decarbonisation, energy independence, and grid resilience, particularly in remote or constrained environments. As pilot projects continue to validate performance under real-world conditions, the pathway toward scalable solar-powered EV infrastructure is becoming increasingly well-defined for the transport engineering sector.

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“It’s big.”
Photo Credit: BNRG Renewables
A huge solar proposal in the Canadian province of New Brunswick is turning heads after developers unveiled plans for the 150-megawatt project — 15 times larger than a solar farm announced in the area last summer.
If it moves forward, the Cookville Solar Project would become one of the largest solar installations in Canada, underscoring how quickly clean energy is scaling up across North America.
According to CBC, the proposed Cookville Solar Project would be built on roughly 400 hectares (almost 1,000 acres) north of Sackville. The project is being developed through a joint venture involving the North Shore Mi’kmaq Tribal Council and BNRG Renewables of Ireland, and it’s expected to contribute as much as 150 megawatts to the regional grid when the sun is shining. That’s enough yearly power for about 12,500 homes, all without adding heat-trapping pollution. 
The project plans to use 340,000 panels, along with supporting infrastructure such as a communications tower and power substation, according to CBC. The project is expected to take 18 to 24 months, wrapping in 2029 and ideally operating for the next 40 years.
Part of what’s drawing so much attention is the project’s size. Phil McKay, senior director at the Canadian Renewable Energy Association, said the project would rank as Canada’s second-largest solar farm if it were up and running right now. Even as larger projects are being developed elsewhere, he said the Cookville solar project would still qualify as “a proper utility-scale power plant.”
Solar projects like this can help make daily life more affordable by expanding access to local, renewable electricity that is less exposed to swings in fuel prices. Cleaner electricity can also contribute to better air quality and healthier communities.
BOBS from Skechers has helped over 2 million shelter pets around the world — and the charity program just announced this year’s Paws for a Cause design-winning sneakers.
These “hound huggers” and “kitten kicks” sneakers are machine washable and equipped with memory foam insoles. Plus, they were designed by passionate students who were inspired by their very own rescue pets.
BOBS from Skechers is also committed to donating half a million dollars to the Best Friends Animal Society this year to help every dog and cat experience the safety and support of a loving home.
Plus, the land around each solar panel can have multiple uses. The Acton family, which owns most of the land in question, is expected to continue using it for blueberry and honey production, as well as for sheep grazing, once the panels are in place, according to CBC. That’s another example of how solar can sometimes work alongside agriculture rather than replace it altogether.
McKay summed up the reactions: “It’s big.”
He said that while some larger solar farms can raise concerns about visibility, Cookville still reflects a broader shift toward serious grid-scale clean energy.
McKay added that solar is increasingly being seen as “essentially a crop” — a productive use of land that generates energy for everyday use. 
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Construction is underway on two solar panel projects just outside the village of Stratford, and applications for two other similar projects in the town of McMillan are slated to go before Marathon …
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There’s been some legal back-and-forth over the project, and many people are trying to stop it in its tracks.

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JOLIET, Ill. (WLS) — Dozens of people gathered in south suburban Joliet on Tuesday to voice their concerns about a proposed solar farm project that could stretch across three townships in Will County.
A judge ordered the meeting to allow opponents to cross-examine developers before a final vote on the project is made. Developers faced tough questions.

"It's your job as the commission to do the right thing. If the application is incomplete, you need to deny it," said Steven Becker, an attorney for solar farm opponents.
Each question asked was on behalf of the dozens of opponents of a proposed 600-megawatt solar and battery storage farm project that would impact many southwest suburban farm and wetland areas.
"It's just not conducive to putting tens of thousands of poles into the ground, galvanized steel, that will, in time, corrode and cause pretty severe poisoning of our water supply," said Green Garden Township resident Melissa Tabb-Eager.
"There is no evidence, or documented evidence of steel piles from solar facilities leeching into ground water. It doesn't exist," said Ben Jacobi, an attorney for Earthrise Energy.
Earthrise Energy, a Virginia-based power producer company that aims to reduce electric greenhouse gas emissions, looks to make Will County home to its Pride of the Prairie solar farm complex.
The proposed project would span about 6,100 acres across Manhattan, Green Garden and Wilton townships.
The Will County Planning and Zoning Commission, ending the hours long meeting, voted against the proposed development.
"So, if this does proceed to a lawsuit down the road, this is where the evidence will be presented. That's why the court granted our temporary restraining order to allow my clients to have this type of cross-examination," Becker said.
This vote was only a recommendation by the commission. Plans will now head to the Will County Executive Committee on Thursday for further consideration with a final vote on this solar project expected by the full board later this month.

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Researchers at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore have developed ultra-thin, semi-transparent perovskite solar cells designed for integration into buildings, vehicles and wearable devices.
The research team, led by Annalisa Bruno, reported that the new devices are approximately 50 times thinner than conventional perovskite solar cells while maintaining comparatively high power conversion efficiencies for ultrathin designs. Their work is detailed in ACS Energy Letters.
According to the researchers, the cells could be incorporated into surfaces such as windows and façades without significantly altering their appearance due to their semi-transparent and colour-neutral properties. The technology is also intended for environments where direct sunlight is limited.
“The built environment accounts for roughly 40 per cent of global energy consumption, so technologies that seamlessly convert buildings’ surfaces into power-generating assets are gaining urgency,” said Assoc Prof Bruno, from NTU’s School of Physical and Mathematical Sciences and School of Materials Science and Engineering. “Our perovskite solar cells offer distinct advantages as they can be manufactured using simple processes at relatively low temperatures. They can also be tuned to absorb specific wavelengths while remaining transparent, and could potentially be scaled over large areas, reducing their carbon footprint.”
 
 
Perovskite solar cells use layered structures that include a semiconductor material capable of absorbing sunlight and converting it into electrical energy. Unlike silicon-based solar panels, the devices can continue generating electricity under indirect or diffuse lighting conditions, which the researchers said makes them suitable for dense urban environments and regions with frequent cloud cover.
The NTU team manufactured the solar cells using thermal evaporation, a vacuum-based deposition process in which materials are heated until they vaporise and form thin films on a surface. The researchers said the method enabled the production of highly uniform ultrathin layers across larger areas while avoiding the use of toxic solvents and reducing defects within the cells.
By modifying the deposition process, the team was able to control the thickness of the perovskite layer and produce both opaque and semi-transparent devices. The researchers believe this is the first demonstration of ultrathin perovskite solar cells fabricated entirely through vacuum-based processes, which they said may improve compatibility with industrial-scale production methods.
Using the process, the researchers produced absorber layers as thin as 10nm. Opaque devices with perovskite layers measuring 10nm, 30nm and 60nm achieved power conversion efficiencies of around seven per cent, 11 per cent and 12 per cent respectively.
The team also developed a semi-transparent solar cell using a 60nm perovskite layer. The device transmitted approximately 41 per cent of visible light while achieving a conversion efficiency of 7.6 per cent. The researchers said the performance ranks among the strongest reported for comparable semi-transparent perovskite solar cells.
The team has filed a patent for the technology through NTUitive and is currently working with industry partners to validate and standardise the thermal evaporation manufacturing process. Further work will focus on improving long-term stability, durability and large-area performance ahead of potential commercial deployment.
The importance of cooling and thermal control is not as widely and well appreciated as it should be. From the advent of High Performance Computers…
Where is the bund? <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bunding#Regulations">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bunding#Regulations</a&gt; CIRIA C736…
For decades manufacturing cellular materials has been the missing layer of engineering! The UK has a distinctive lead in designing such but has not…

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Wild foxes began slaughtering livestock at the Shoalhaven Community Solar Farm in New South Wales.
Two llamas were deployed as “livestock guardians.” It’s a practice backed by the 2024 NSW Department of Primary Industries.
At first, the sheep solved a simple problem.
Rapid grass growth creates a fire hazard for solar infrastructure.
Machines cost money and need constant maintenance.
“Solar grazing” sheep reduced maintenance costs by 30% while cooling under the 3,000sqm of panels.
The animals grazed beneath the panels naturally.
The panels also protected them from Australia’s intense heat.
But another threat soon appeared.
Wild foxes began targeting the flock at night. The farm needed protection.
Invasive European foxes kill over 190 million birds and millions of livestock in Australia annually.
Operators searched for a solution that could live beside the sheep.
Their answer arrived with long necks and fearless instincts.
Llamas possess a 360-degree field of vision and an innate hatred for canids.
Could llamas really guard an entire solar farm flock? 
The Shoalhaven Community Solar Farm already operated differently from most energy projects.
The facility combined solar power with livestock grazing.
Thousands of panels stretched across the property.
The sheep controlled the vegetation naturally.
That reduced mowing costs around the panels.
The setup also kept the animals cooler during hot weather.
But foxes quickly discovered the grazing flock.
Fox attacks regularly threaten livestock across rural Australia.
The solar farm suddenly faced a new challenge.
Operators needed natural guardians, not more machinery.
The farm introduced “KillerWatt” and “TerrorWatt,” names referencing the site’s 3-megawatt capacity.
The names matched their job.
Guardian llamas reduce sheep predation by up to 100% in controlled Australian studies.
They naturally confront predators instead of fleeing.
The sheep reacted almost immediately after the llamas arrived.
The flock became noticeably calmer once that happened.
The llamas quickly became more than attractions.
They stayed close beside the sheep constantly.
They monitored fences and watched the open ground carefully.
The patrols became nonstop.
Unlike sheep, llamas rarely panic during danger.
They often challenge smaller predators aggressively.
That behavior mattered at the solar farm.
The site contains long shaded rows beneath the panels.
Those areas could easily hide predators moving unseen.
Sheep lack defense. Foxes utilized the solar array’s 800kW infrastructure for cover. They almost turned the solar site into their natural habitat.
The llamas changed that balance almost immediately.
According to Repower Shoalhaven, the pair protected grazing sheep daily. 
The llamas used “stotting”—a high-footed jump—and piercing alarm screams to alert the flock.
They positioned themselves between threats and the flock.
They also reacted quickly to unfamiliar animals.
That instinct explains their growing popularity on farms worldwide.
“Agrivoltaics” is a global trend, optimizing land for both 1,000 homes’ worth of energy and protein.
What happened after the llamas arrived surprised many people. 
KillerWatt and TerrorWatt behaved exactly like livestock bodyguards.
They patrolled near the sheep constantly.
They guarded the flock aggressively.
When threats approached, the llamas became defensive immediately.
They chased predators away from grazing areas.
That behavior helped calm the sheep significantly.
It also discouraged foxes from approaching the property.
Unlike sheep, llamas stay composed during confrontations.
They often charge directly toward danger.
The setup also revealed something bigger happening in renewable energy.
Dual-use solar farms increase land productivity by over 60%.
Many solar farms now support agriculture and wildlife alongside electricity production.
Some sites include grazing, restoration projects, and wildlife programs simultaneously.
An industry working to bring the benefits of evolving energy production to the world.
The Shoalhaven project powers more than 1,000 Australian homes.
But the llamas became the project’s unexpected stars.
Visitors began treating them like local celebrities.
Online reactions ranged from surprise to outright disbelief.
Still, for the sheep beneath those panels, the arrangement works.
These guardians deploy 15-meter projectile spit and 660-pound charges to deter intruders.
Proving that even energy projects need some protection.
© 2026 by Ecoportal
© 2026 by Ecoportal

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It’s a dream come true for the average homeowner. Walk into Walmart, Home Depot — any big box store — pick up a couple of solar panels, head home, plug them in, and you’re ready to go.
What seemed like a pipe dream just a few years ago is quickly becoming a reality across the country as balcony solar bills storm their way through U.S. state legislatures. But those bills will be ultimately meaningless if there are no products on the shelves.
Swedish furniture giant IKEA has already begun selling plug-in solar and storage systems in Germany, but the technology isn’t quite so ubiquitous in the U.S. yet. Still, there are a select few pioneer companies who have begun putting balcony solar products on American shelves.

A look at a balcony solar market leader

Doug Hewitt, U.S. director for APsystems, says that the DIY solar market is always going to have a soft spot in his heart. His firm’s EZ1 plug-in solar systems offers a new solution for that market in the U.S., he says.
“APsystems has been doing the EZ1, the plug-in solar, over in Europe for the last few years,” Hewitt says. “We were one of the first ones to have it available over here in the U.S., and we brought it in right around the time that Utah passed their bill. I would say it didn’t start off very quickly but then it started to gain some traction. Now, we have 33 states that have passed laws, or are looking at it.”
The company’s EZ1 system is “all people come and talk to me about now,” according to Hewitt. With the plug-in microinverter itself coming in at about $250, and full panel and mounting kits often showing for about $750, the plug-in market could become mainstream for America’s middle class very quickly, he says.
“A lot of people are a little bit unsure as far as plugging it in; they’re not used to having solar yet,” he says. “You have your DIYers, your renters. People just want to have a little bit of their own say as far as what they’re paying, when we continuously have rates going up all over the place.
“I think the fact that anybody can shave a little bit of money off their bill just makes them feel empowered.”
There is truth to Hewitt’s words, with the average American household seeing a 40% increase in utility bills since 2021, according to the Washington Post. He says the EZ1 not only offers a solution that will pay for itself relatively quickly, but it allows for new demographics like apartment renters to get into the solar market.
“I remember when I set mine up, I honestly couldn’t believe how intuitive and easy it was,” Hewitt says. “That’s when I was really sold on the product myself. Quite literally anybody can do this because it just plugs in, and then it’s done through wi-fi and Bluetooth. It’s crazy easy.”
Cora Stryker, co-founder of Californian solar non-profit Bright Saver, says her company works with APsystems — alongside several other manufacturers — to get their products out of the factory and into the market. While not a manufacturer itself, Bright Saver has become a crucial component of the plug-in system market.
“Bright Saver, as a nonprofit, we are committed to the vision of getting balcony solar systems into the hands of every American who wants them,” Stryker says. “There’s a huge group of Americans who want the power to purchase their own power. They are seeing their energy bills rise every month, and they feel completely powerless to stop it. … And paradoxically, energy has never been cheaper to produce.”
Solar power has become the cheapest energy that humanity has ever been able to produce, according to Stryker. Bright Saver currently has two different plug-in solar kits available for shipping within California, with the NEM Go listed at just under $2,000, and the NEM Pro at just under $1,500. Stryker estimates that once more states pass pro-balcony solar legislation, those prices will plummet even further.
“A lot of the real barriers we’ve discovered are regulatory,” she says. “Currently as of today, we have 35 states who have introduced this legislation, plus D.C. Legislators coast to coast, and in Hawaii and Alaska, all over the 50 states, recognize that their constituents need some way to lower their electricity bills. But they have no access to the cheap solar technology that would reduce those electricity bills.”
As the American electrical grid experiences further strain at peak times, plug-in solar could become potentially life-saving technology, Stryker says. Systems like the EZ1 or the Hoymiles HMS-1000 microinverter could be crucial for renters and homeowners who need to keep medicine cold, or those who rely on electrically-powered machinery in their daily lives.
In Germany, these plug-in systems pay for themselves within one to two years, according to Stryker. The goal for the U.S. should be to reach that level, and such a goal is becoming more realistic by the day, she says.
“(Success is when) we look like Germany,” she says. “Anyone can buy these for a few hundred dollars, bring them home, plug them in, and start reducing their energy bills and having more energy independence, in the case of an increasingly unreliable grid going down.”

Tags: APsystems, balcony solar, plug-in solar, policy


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This week’s policy roundup covers a Pennsylvania Supreme Court ruling that will affect how private landowners are taxed for stormwater improvements, a New Jersey bill to help soil conservation district boards, and a New York bill that would outlaw a novel form of aquaculture.
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Kerrie Marquardt, of the Town of Pella, points to recommendations for the community to keep solar farms and data centers out during an informational meeting May 12 at Pella Town Hall. More than 100 people packed the meeting room, while others peered in through the windows with umbrellas deterring the rain falling outside so they could hear about proposals taking place in the town. (Lee Pulaski | NEW Media)
Many communities are concerned about either solar farms or data centers destroying their pristine country lifestyle.
In the Town of Pella, residents are worried about both of them at the same time. They packed Pella Town Hall for an information meeting May 12 — even resulting in some latecomers standing out in the rain with umbrellas so they could still hear the presentation about the threats that both provide.
There is a company, Nexamp, based in Boston and Chicago, that is interested in using land in the Town of Pella for a solar farm, according to town officials.
Current town ordinances and zoning do not address solar or data projects, as many policies date back to 1994. Shawano County is looking at establishing a moratorium on data centers in its boundaries, but because the Town of Pella has its own zoning system that’s not controlled by the county, it has to establish its own moratorium if it wants to slow down future development efforts.
Solar farms are a different story. According to Town of Pella resident Kerrie Marquardt, who led the presentation on the issues, any kind of solar project involving rooftops or something with a maximum of 100 megawatts is under the purview of the town. Larger projects, however, get decided by the Wisconsin Public Service Commission, which could leave the town helpless to keep them out.
“We have no say,” Marquardt said.
There were two potential solar farm projects that were vying for space in the Town of Belle Plaine, but neither one went through.
The first one, which expressed interest in 2021 for up to 500 acres of the 630-acre county farm, was pitched by Geronimo Power, formerly known as National Grid Renewables. It could have provided millions of dollars in revenue for the county. After that, OneEnergy asked the county for land near Rose Brook Road and state Highway 22, but it was determined the revenue to the county would be minimal.
Marquardt said she spoke with the new chairperson in the Town of Morgan in Oconto County about the solar farm project there, which had been in the works for five years without town residents realizing. The former chairperson and one of the town board members worked with NextEra to bring the Fox Solar Project for a 100-megawatt solar farm and 50-megawatt battery facility to almost 650 acres of land.
Marquardt said she was worried something similar could happen with the Nexamp project.
“We sat here for three years and didn’t realize we were being targeted,” Marquardt said.
She warned that towns that have signed deals with solar farm companies were put under gag orders not to discuss details with residents, media or others who inquire. Marquardt said she could not find any consistent information on the number of solar developments in the Midwest, and she added that acreage for solar farms is also a target for companies wanting to build data centers.
Marquardt noted that solar farm companies are interested in getting their hands on farmers’ land, whatever the cost.
“If they want your land, they’re going to keep upping,” she said. “This lady, for 60 acres, they were going to give her $11 million across 30 years.”
Town of Pella zoning favors land preservation, according to Marquardt, even with future plans for residential areas. Industrial areas are not in abundance, she said.
“This shows we want to keep things simple and protect our agriculture, our farmland and preserve our land,” Marquardt said. “This is a good thing.”
Town of Pella farmer Duane Buettner said that while he’s not in favor of solar farms and data centers coming into the community, he could see why farmers would be in favor of selling their land in these tough times for them to make a living.
“Someone comes along and offers me $15 million for X amount of acres — there’s no money in farming,” Buettner said. “I know we want to protect that, but everybody wants cheap food, and the farmer wants money, too.”
Buettner was in the minority, though, as many speakers wanted solutions to keep solar and data companies from gaining a foothold in the community. Gracie Waukechon, a Bonduel resident and environmental activist, noted that large-scale data centers can use millions of gallons of water daily to cool servers, putting the Town of Pella at risk of losing available water for residents.
“I’m no farmer, but I know that our dairy cattle requires a lot of water, and I would rather that our water go to supporting our farmers,” Waukechon said. “We need to make sure that our ethics are keeping up with our technological advancement.”
She added that artificial intelligence, which is part of the reason data centers are popping up, is contaminating water supplies and has been used in child sex exploitation. Also, data centers bring in people to construct them, but there are few jobs available in the community once they’re built. All Pella will get, Waukechon said, is higher energy bills and lower water supplies.
Waukechon recommended that farmers put their land into trust so it can’t be sold, and that will help protect future generations.
“We can fight this,” she said.
Doug Blashe, a Town of Pella farmer, believes that any solar projects the town has control over should be zoned commercial instead of letting the euphemism of a solar farm keep such development under agricultural zoning.
“These people are ruthless,” Blashe said. “They say that after 25, 30 years, they’re going to come and take it all down when it’s no longer useful. Yeah, I’ve got land to sell, too, in Florida.”
Jill Romberg, another Town of Pella farmer, said she has received numerous letters from various companies asking to buy the family property, and she noted other farmers in the community are in the same situation.
“These companies come from all over, and they’re very vague about what they want to do with (the land),” Romberg said. “They give us examples of how much money we’re going to make, how much money they’re going to pay. Remember, nothing is for free. Just to let you know, we are not signing any of those things.”
lpulaski@newmedia-wi.com
 
Town of Pella farmer Duane Buettner tells a packed house at Pella Town Hall that he doesn’t favor solar farms or data centers coming into the community, but that he understands why farmers are willing to sell their land to them. Buettner added that it’s a bad time to be a farmer, with people wanting cheap food while those in agriculture are getting scraps for all their hard work. (Lee Pulaski | NEW Media)
Town of Pella farmer Jill Romberg tells those in attendance at a May 12 informational meeting at Pella Town Hall that she regularly gets letters from companies wanting to buy her farm, with vague language on what would be done with it. Romberg said she never plans to sign a deal that would convert her farm to a solar farm or data center. (Lee Pulaski | NEW Media)
Bonduel resident Gracie Waukechon, an environmental activist, speaks at a May 12 meeting at Pella Town Hall regarding solar farms and data centers. She warns that the latter will require millions of gallons of water, resulting in less water for the farmers in the Town of Pella. (Lee Pulaski | NEW Media)

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As the US faces the prospect of a fifth solar-related anti-dumping and countervailing duty (AD/CVD) case swinging into action, the logical conclusion is that American PV manufacturers will continue pursuing manufacturers they believe to be using Chinese products until there is nowhere left for them to hide.
The timing for the anti-circumvention request couldn’t be any more significant either, with US president Donald Trump on an official visit to China the same week the request was filed.
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This is the first such visit from a sitting US President in nine years and has turned US attention towards east and Southeast Asia. The AD/CVD tariff impacted predominantly Southeast Asian firms, and there is an ongoing case against manufacturers in India, Indonesia and Laos.
However, the Alliance for American Solar Manufacturing and Trade (AASMT)—which is comprised of First Solar, Hanwha QCells, DYCM Power, Great Lakes Solex PR, Silfab Solar, Suniva, Swift Solar (as Solx) and Talon PV—has now turned its eyes on a different region entirely; Ethiopia has become the first non-Asian country to be targeted by US manufacturers.
Just two solar manufacturers—Toyo Solar and Origin Solar Manufacturing—in Ethiopia could be affected by this request made to the US Department of Commerce to initiate an anti-circumvention inquiry into crystalline silicon (c-Si) PV cells and modules assembled in Ethiopia using Chinese-origin components.
According to the coalition of manufacturers, the two companies are allegedly circumventing existing AD/CVD orders “on solar products by routing Chinese wafers and components through minimal Ethiopian solar manufacturing operations before shipping finished cells and modules to the United States.”
The fact that Ethiopia is the next country that could face trade scrutiny is interesting, as it was one of the first emerging markets to announce new manufacturing capacity in Africa. Toyo Solar was one of the leading companies to establish operational solar manufacturing capacity in the country and the broader MENA region as manufacturers looked for alternatives after Indonesia, Laos, and India were hit with AD/CVD actions, says Aaron Hall, president of renewables data platform Anza.
“That’s impactful because Toyo was among the first movers into the region, and now they are among the first to face trade scrutiny there. It raises the possibility that other emerging manufacturing hubs could face similar scrutiny if production continues shifting geographically,” explains Hall.
There are a few factors that make this slightly different from previous solar AD/CVD investigations. The first is that this is a question of anti-circumvention, not an attempt to prove that there was dumping and subsidies that were countervailed, but rather whether the companies have engaged in minimal processing in a third country to evade existing duties, an industry expert tells PV Tech Premium.
In its statement, the coalition points to existing duties on Chinese c-Si PV goods, which were the recipient of the first solar AD/CVD order back in 2012.
The expert added that, in anti-dumping and countervailing duty cases, the International Trade Administration (ITA) within the US Department of Commerce determines whether there has been dumping or prohibited subsidies. This then goes to the International Trade Commission (ITC), which does the same and determines whether or not there has been injury or a threat of injury to the domestic industry.
The industry expert explains that in general, three out of four petitions result in duties, but that when a petition fails to result in duties, it usually stems from the ITC not finding examples of wrongdoing. With this latest anti-circumvention request against Ethiopia, the ITC would not be involved due to the fact that the China Solar One case in 2012 already established that there was injury. If the US Department of Commerce moves forward with the AASMT’s request, it will investigate this case solely, without involving the ITC.
“That means the odds of getting a ruling are higher because the Department of Commerce is very, very favourable to petitioners,” said the expert.
The outcome is yet to be seen, but it is worth noting that we have a similar precedent in a 2022 anti-circumvention case against four Southeast Asian countries—Vietnam, Thailand, Cambodia and Malaysia—in which these countries were found to use Chinese wafers and Chinese bill of materials.
“A critical issue has emerged regarding supply chain transparency. While Toyo maintains that the majority of its wafers originate from Indonesia, complainants have presented shipping data suggesting that Indonesia has not exported these wafers to Ethiopia. This discrepancy underscores the paramount importance of robust supply chain traceability—particularly in the current environment where US manufacturers are coordinating efforts to insulate domestic production from international competition,” explains Moustafa Ramadan, head of PV Tech’s Market Research.
Another key difference with this latest request is that the US manufacturers’ coalition filed it before a final decision was made on the ongoing AD/CVD investigation against India, Indonesia, and Laos.
The industry expert told PV Tech Premium that: “This is a more rapid rate of filing of cases than we’ve seen in the past, and we should expect more rapid filings in the future.”
As discussed previously on PV Tech, America’s solar trade cases have the characteristics of a game of “whack-a-mole” in which one manufacturing hub is excluded from the US market only for another to pop up, which is then the target of legislation, and so on. But considering that this time it has not waited for a final decision in the ongoing AD/CVD case against India, Indonesia and Laos, this begs the question of how quickly US manufacturers will file the next one and how far they will go in protecting their market?
“The initiation of the AD/CVD investigation targeting Ethiopia represents a continuation of the protectionist trend that originated with China and has progressively expanded to encompass Southeast Asia and India,” explains Ramadan. “Ethiopia’s inclusion in this investigation is particularly concerning, as it signals that US manufacturers are prepared to challenge any entity that imports solar cells or modules into the US if they find gaps in their supply chains.
“This development raises an inevitable question: Will Egypt and Turkey be next?”
In its press release, the AASMT highlighted other countries and regions with similar trends from previous cases, which could possibly hint at who will be next. In its statement, the AASMT mentioned the Philippines, Nigeria, Egypt and the Middle East.
The other problem this request raises is the lack of available solar cells for the US market, which comply with Foreign Entity of Concern (FEOC) requirements and are not subject to tariffs.
Data from PV Tech’s Market Research shows that the bottleneck of solar cells is becoming critical, with over 11GW of domestic solar cell capacity versus over 66GW of domestic module manufacturing capacity.
The cumulative available capacity of cells that is not impacted by any AD/CVD tariffs and is FEOC-compliant wouldn’t cover the US’ annual manufacturing capacity for modules. This shortage of cells is likely to become even more critical with the combined 6.2GW of annual nameplate capacity for solar cells from Toyo and Origin Solar in Ethiopia likely to be tariffed.
Given the lack of domestic solar cells, some companies have abandoned the idea of sourcing both domestic solar cells and modules, focusing only on domestic modules, explains Hall.
“For the US supply chain, ‘domestic content lite’ is something a lot of companies are pursuing, where you don’t necessarily need a domestic cell. For companies that were planning to source cells from Ethiopia, this filing may now create hesitation because of the retroactivity risk once the case progresses further.
“It will not affect domestic-content cell modules that are manufactured in the US and do not use Ethiopian supply. The exposure here is specifically tied to cells coming from Ethiopia,” says Hall. He adds that this negative development could potentially immediately affect prices.
“A significant number of companies use Toyo as an OEM supplier, so those buyers may now need to source elsewhere. It will probably create some inflationary price pressure, potentially right away. Not significantly on a global basis, but modestly, because many buyers are using those cells,” explains Hall.
Furthermore, an industry expert explains that the AD/CVD cases may advantage US cell makers, but do not make the US a good place to process solar cells. “It’s hard to build factories in the US, and it’s hard to invest in the US when you don’t know what’s going to happen in a few years. We don’t have the stability to make the US a good place for investing in cell manufacturing.”
The upcoming edition of our journal, PV Tech Power, to which our subscribers have access, will further explore the current state of the US supply chain and its challenges, including tariffs and other trade barriers.
Additional reporting from Ben Willis.

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You Are Being Misled About Renewable Energy Technology. (NERxlJaWFx)  Fathom Journal
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A Cornell University research team developed a control framework that simultaneously considers past and future conditions when determining solar panel tilt angle. The researchers told pv magazine it is designed to be plug-and-play, allowing for software developers and solar operators to incorporate their optimization algorithms directly into the framework.
Image: pv magazine / AI generated
Researchers from Cornell University in the United States have developed a novel control framework for agrivoltaic systems designed to address the challenge of balancing a system’s energy generation with crop light requirements.
“While scientists have proposed several optimization algorithms to try and solve this issue in recent years, the industry lacks a generalized, adaptable control framework to implement them,” corresponding author Max Zhang told pv magazine.
The new framework combines a proactive decision-making approach with a reactive strategies mechanism which, according to the research paper, allows for past and future conditions to be accounted for simultaneously when determining the solar panel tilt angle at a given time over the course of the growing season.
“Consequently, it is able to provide a systematic and effective response to environmental and operational conditions and their uncertainties while considering system constraints such as inverter capacity, capabilities that are largely absent from existing methods,” the research paper continues.
The proactive control strategy uses weather forecasts and crop growth models to generate a panel tilt schedule, maximizing energy production while satisfying crop light requirements and other system constraints. “It calculates the optimal panel tilt angles throughout the day to maximize solar power generation, while ensuring the crops are expected to receive their required daily sunlight,” Zhang said.
The framework’s reactive mechanism monitors real-time conditions to cover the real-time lift the crops actually receive. Zhang explained that if the plants experience a sunlight deficit caused by prolonged cloud cover, the system is capable of updating its target settings and will direct the panels to let more light through in the following days to make up for the shortfall.
Zhang told pv magazine that this combination of anticipating the weather and reacting to real-time plant data outperforms existing methods, with test results showing that the new strategies improved performance.
“For a representative crop light requirement of 30 mol·m⁻²·d⁻¹, previous approaches could leave crops with light deficits of up to 43%. The new control framework reduced the maximum deficit to 8%,” Zhang said. “Across many simulations, the simpler rule-based method performed similarly to the optimization-based one when the solar system was sized near a standard DC/AC ratio of 1. At higher DC/AC ratios, the optimization-based strategy produced up to 14% more energy without compromising crop light requirements.”
In the research paper’s conclusion, the researchers write that a key strength of the control framework is its generalizability across different crops, climates, and system configurations and its compatibility with both heuristic and optimization-based proactive control algorithms.
Zhang also pointed out the architecture of the framework is designed to be plug and play, allowing for software developers and solar operators to incorporate their optimization algorithms directly into the framework. “By providing a flexible, generalizable architecture that integrates predictive planning with reactive compensations, this control framework makes agrivoltaics highly viable and scalable, even in regions with challenging, cloudy climates,” he concluded.
The proposed framework is presented in the research paper “An integrated control framework for optimal sunlight sharing in agrivoltaic systems,” available in the journal Solar Energy.
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Pollution from coal-fired power stations may be reducing global solar electricity generation by nearly 6%, with emissions from fossil fuel plants directly undermining the performance of nearby solar photovoltaic (PV) systems, according to new research led by the University of Oxford and University College London.
The study, published in Nature Sustainability, used satellite imagery, atmospheric observations and modelling to assess more than 140,000 solar PV installations worldwide. Researchers estimated that aerosol pollution — tiny particles suspended in the atmosphere — reduced global solar electricity output by 5.8% in 2023.
According to the researchers, that equates to around 111 terawatt-hours (TWh) of lost electricity generation, roughly equivalent to the annual output of 18 medium-sized coal-fired power plants.
The study suggests the issue represents a significant and often overlooked constraint on the global energy transition, particularly in regions where coal generation and solar deployment are expanding simultaneously.
Between 2017 and 2023, newly installed solar PV capacity added an average of 246.6 TWh of electricity generation each year, while aerosol-related losses from existing systems averaged 74 TWh annually — equivalent to almost one-third of the gains from new solar installations.
Lead author Dr Rui Song, from the Department of Physics at Oxford and the Mullard Space Science Laboratory at UCL, said: “We are seeing rapid global expansion of renewable energy, but the effectiveness of that transition is lower than often assumed. As coal and solar expand in parallel, emissions alter the radiation environment, directly undermining the performance of solar generation.”
Researchers traced the origins of aerosol pollution affecting solar installations and identified coal-fired power generation as a major contributor.
The effect was found to be particularly significant in China, where coal and solar infrastructure have expanded rapidly and are frequently located close together.
China generated 793.5 TWh of solar PV electricity in 2023 — accounting for 41.5% of global solar production — but also experienced some of the highest aerosol-related losses, with solar output estimated to have been reduced by 7.7%.
The researchers estimate that approximately 29% of aerosol-related solar PV losses in China are directly linked to emissions from coal-fired power plants.
Coal combustion releases fine particulate pollution that scatters and absorbs sunlight before it reaches solar panels, reducing electricity generation.
Dr Song said: “Air pollution doesn’t just block sunlight – it also changes clouds, which can cut solar power even further. That means the real impact is likely to be bigger than we’ve measured, so we may be overestimating how much solar power can contribute to reducing emissions if we do not get pollution from coal power under control.”
Despite the findings, the study noted that China was also the only major region to show sustained improvements over the past decade.
Researchers found aerosol-related solar PV losses in China declined by an average of 0.96 TWh per year between 2013 and 2023, which they attributed to stricter air pollution controls and wider deployment of ultra-low-emission technologies at coal-fired plants.
To carry out the study, researchers combined satellite imaging and machine-learning techniques to identify and map solar installations worldwide before integrating the data with atmospheric observations and solar energy modelling.
Professor Jan-Peter Muller of the Mullard Space Science Laboratory at UCL said: “Global satellite imaging enabled us to map the inexorable rise of cheap non-polluting solar power during daylight hours. In the near future, we will be able to observe the impacts of dust and smoke particles on reducing solar energy at the Earth’s surface in real-time every 10 minutes from geostationary satellites spanning the Earth.”
The study also warned that overlooking pollution-related solar losses could lead governments and businesses to overestimate renewable energy output when planning decarbonisation strategies.
Co-author Dr Chenchen Huang of the University of Bath said: “Our findings send a clear warning to the Sustainable Development Goals: overlooking pollution-induced solar energy losses can lead to a systematic overestimation of renewable energy output by governments, businesses and the broader community. To stay on track, policies must account for this hidden drag and shift fossil-fuel subsidies away from coal.”
Professor Myles Allen, founder of Oxford Net Zero and a professor in Oxford’s Department of Physics who was not involved in the study, said the findings highlighted broader hidden costs associated with coal power.
“All scenarios that meet the goals of the Paris Agreement show a rapid transition away from unabated coal, which isn’t happening,” he said. “The reason is that coal power is still remarkably cheap – as this study shows, that’s because the real costs are hidden.”
Researchers added that while aerosol-related impacts are relatively moderate in the UK compared with more heavily polluted regions, the findings underline the importance of integrating air quality, energy infrastructure and climate policy when planning future renewable energy systems.
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KUTAI KARTANEGARA, Indonesia — Asniah recalls nights lying in darkness listening to cicadas and the passing hum of outboard motors after her family moved to Muara Enggelam in the 1990s, an over-the-water village in the interior of Indonesian Borneo, cut off from basic services.
Around the turn of the century, a handful of homes in Muara Enggelam acquired diesel generators, bringing electric lighting for the first time to the timber stilt houses that still line the last mile of the river where the Enggelam meets Borneo’s Lake Melintang.
The Kutai Kartanegara district government here later expanded this basic electrification program, but residents paid several times more for power than a grid-connected urban household.
Moreover, the generators ran only from dusk to dawn and would frequently break down, plunging Muara Enggelam back into the void Asniah recalled on moving here three decades earlier as a child.
“We were just grateful — things had been harder before,” Asniah, a mother of three now in her early 40s, told Mongabay Indonesia at her home.
“Even though there was 24-hour electricity in the city at the time,” she added.
Uneven access to electricity has abetted inequality in what is now Indonesia ever since Dutch colonialists introduced captive coal plants in the 19th century to power their plantation operations.
Indonesia’s Gini coefficient, a measure of inequality, records the wealth gap between rich and poor as wider today than in 1998, the year the autocrat Suharto exited power after more than three decades, sparking the country’s transition to democracy.
Energy ministry data show Indonesia’s electrification rate increased from around two-thirds of households in 2010 to 99% a decade later, implying near-universal access today.
In remote areas, however, this can mean village offices receive electricity but outlying households remain powerless.
Muara Enggelam is home to around 750 people and is accessible only by boat, with the nearest town an expensive two-hour journey away.
Indonesia’s energy ministry says 1.4 million people remain without electricity nationwide, highlighting the challenge of connecting remote communities across an archipelago of more than 17,000 islands, where more than half the population lives on just one, Java.
Research shows life without access to gas and electricity can cause disproportionate harm to women and children. UNICEF, the United Nations’ children’s agency, estimates indoor burning of solid fuels — like kerosene for lighting — is responsible for thousands of annual pneumonia deaths among children under the age of 5 in Indonesia.
Across remote areas of Indonesia, local governments and charities have used small solar systems, microhydro projects and even bamboo-burning generators to bring electricity for the first time to isolated communities.
In many cases these are intended to replace diesel generators, which remain the primary power supply for hundreds of villages across the country.
Data from Indonesia’s energy ministry showed the capacity of diesel-generated power plants in Indonesia declined by 8.5% from 2018 to 2024, bringing diesel electricity to around 6% of Indonesia’s total generation in 2024.
In late 2024, Muara Enggelam received an additional 23.1 kilowatts-peak of solar capacity from the Kutai Kartanegara district government from a 4.5 billion rupiah ($257,000) upgrade using lithium-ion batteries, which are more efficient than the tubular gel batteries used previously.
“We’ve expanded capacity four times through community contributions and government support,” said Madi, the village head of Muara Enggelam. “Because the village has repeatedly been included in national pilot programs, we’ve continued to receive financial assistance.”
Available data show that the experience of Muara Enggelam does not reflect the broader national trend across Indonesia.
Energy ministry data showed the total capacity of solar power plants increased almost threefold between 2018 and 2024, but to a total of just 35 megawatts. That meant solar accounted for less than 1% of the power generation of diesel across the archipelago in 2024.
And a new report this year by civil society organization Celios and Greenpeace, a pressure group, found this renewable energy uptake in rural households had mostly stalled across Indonesia’s 84,000 villages, even as the government pledges a sweeping energy transition over the next decade.
The number of villages and subdistricts reporting at least some household solar power use declined from 4,176 in 2021 to 3,076 in 2024, a reduction of 26.4%, according to the Celios and Greenpeace report.
“Urban areas and provinces with large-scale investment (such as Jakarta) have seen rapid improvement, while eastern regions and rural areas continue to lag significantly behind,” the report authors concluded.
Since 2017, Indonesia’s energy ministry has targeted the archipelago’s remotest communities through the Indonesia Terang (“Bright Indonesia”) program, which intended to bring electricity to around 2,000 communities, largely through replication of the solar system built here in Muara Enggelam.
Last year, the energy ministry announced a rebrand of its electrification initiatives under the name Merdeka dari Kegelapan (“Freedom from Darkness”).
In Muara Enggelam, the first signs of an energy transition emerged around 2015, after the energy ministry allocated 3.4 billion rupiah ($195,300) for a 30-kWp solar array, an upgrade on the diesel generators that had provided lighting.
The year after solar electricity reached Muara Enggelam, Asniah started a home business using a blender to produce amplang, a local fish cracker made from the Enggelam River’s belida fish (genus Chitala).
“Using a blender was a bit of a worry before because the fuel would run out quickly,” Asniah said. “A liter [of diesel] wouldn’t last an hour — now it’s much more convenient.”
Efforts to electrify remote Indonesian villages often struggle with failing equipment, difficult access to technicians and limited power supply. In Muara Enggelam, however, the 30-kWp solar installation launched in 2015 has gradually expanded through community fees and government support to around 80 kWp, enough to supply nearly 200 homes.
“Using a generator was expensive — that’s why so few people started businesses,” said Jam’ah, who manages the village-owned enterprise, which is known in Indonesia as a BUMDes. “The solar energy has been a relief for people.”
For Jam’ah, a mother of one, management of the solar array is helping attend to another form of entrenched inequality across Southeast Asia’s most populous country. According to the United Nations Development Program (UNDP), less than 5% of energy managers in Indonesia are women.
Reliable electricity has enabled the village enterprise to since extend its commercial footprint to basic banking services and sales of drinking water. Next, the village plans to open refrigerators powered by the solar panels, which will give households and fishers more options.
“The people here are fishers — a good catch increases their purchasing power,” Jam’ah said, wearing a ruby-colored hair-covering. “And that supports all businesses here.”
Electricity has also enabled smartphone charging and internet access sufficient to access the social media marketplaces vital to showcase Asniah’s business. She has gone on to open a food stall, where a day’s sales often reach 1 million rupiah (nearly $60).
“Thank God, it’s so much more practical now,” Asniah said. “This just wouldn’t have been possible before.”
Banner image: Solar panels in Bali, Indonesia. Image for representational purpose. Image by Selamat Made via Flickr (CC BY 2.0).
This story was first published here in Indonesia on April 17, 2026.
Fossil fuel subsidies and high costs stall energy transition across rural Indonesia
Across the tropics, a growing movement is working to secure a future for primates in the face of disease, deforestation and wildlife trade. Reporting from across the planet, this video series highlights how scientists, conservationists and local communities are rebuilding populations and reconnecting fragmented forests. Along the way, it reveals the innovation, collaboration and resilience […]
© 2026 Copyright Conservation news. Mongabay is a U.S.-based non-profit conservation and environmental science news platform. Our EIN or tax ID is 45-3714703.
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Burrito, a rescued donkey, patrols 33,600 solar panels at Volkswagen’s 9.5-megawatt facility in Chattanooga.
He stands guard over 50 sheep, instantly alerting the flock to local predators.
To Burrito, this 66-acre industrial site is his personal territory.
He memorizes the layout of every row and every steel mounting post.
The setup sounds unusual at first.
This isn’t just a rescue story; it’s a high-stakes “agrivoltaic” experiment in regenerative energy.
How did a stray animal become the high-tech facility’s most vital security asset?
The plant provides 12.5% of the power for VW’s manufacturing facility during peak production.
This energy helps build the ID.4 electric SUV, closing the loop on sustainable production.
Keeping vegetation under control quickly became a constant challenge.
Traditional mowers risked damaging the five “Sunny Central” inverters and miles of sensitive cabling.
Fuel-powered tractors also risk leaking hydraulic fluid into the local water table.
Silicon Ranch introduced sheep to graze, reducing fire risks and soil erosion without using fossil-fuel mowers.
The sheep were efficient, but they were sitting ducks for Tennessee’s coyote and bobcat populations.
That changed how workers managed the site.
Burrito was brought in to provide a “biological shield,” using his natural aggression toward canines to deter threats.
They share the same diet as the sheep, making them the most cost-effective security choice.
That behavior became important later.
The grazing project expanded over time.
Sheep handled most of the vegetation beneath the panels.
That prevented tall grasses from blocking sunlight or creating maintenance hazards.
This grazing method eliminates soil compaction and sequesters carbon through “trampling” fertilization.
Meanwhile, Burrito developed a routine around the flock.
He regularly walked perimeter fences during the day.
If unfamiliar animals approached, he reacted immediately.
Donkeys naturally protect herd animals from threats. It’s in their nature, despite their “dozy” reputation.
They stay alert and often confront predators directly.
At the solar site, the animal started acting as if he belonged there.
Burrito acts as a scout, clearing “paddocks” for safety before the sheep enter to feed.
Workers said the donkey even inspected areas before the sheep moved through them.
Researchers and land managers have started paying closer attention to similar projects across the United States.
Large solar farms often occupy enormous stretches of fenced grassland.
Those areas require constant upkeep.
Natural grazing systems can reduce emissions tied to fuel-powered mowing equipment.
They can also improve biodiversity around the panels.
That combination made Tennessee’s Silicon Ranch and Volkswagen stand out.
This “regenerative energy” model is now a blueprint for 15,000 acres of solar land across the U.S.
Burrito holds a title few in his species can claim: Security Chief for a multi-million dollar renewable energy grid.
He was there to protect the sheep. 
That was his hidden role behind the entire setup.
Donkeys have guarded livestock for centuries because they react aggressively toward predators.
At the solar site, Burrito became the flock’s protector while the sheep handled vegetation management beneath the panels.
Together, the animals solved two problems at once.
The sheep reduced mowing demands.
The donkey reduced predator risks.
Once a stray without a home, he is now the most essential “worker” on the property.
The system has become so effective that similar “solar grazing” projects are spreading across parts of the world.
Operators increasingly see animals as part of long-term solar infrastructure rather than temporary additions.
At the Tennessee facility, the rescue donkey quietly became one of the most important workers on the entire property.
© 2026 by Ecoportal
© 2026 by Ecoportal

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Coal pollution is cutting solar power output worldwide, study finds  Phys.org
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By Shelby Webb | 05/14/2026 06:53 AM EDT
Federal researchers say solar on Texas’ main power grid may reach new heights in 2026, while Republicans continue to criticize renewable energy.
The sun reflects off a solar panel in Buckholts, Texas. Ashley Landis/AP
Solar power is poised to outproduce coal generation over a full year for the first time in Texas, offering a bright spot for renewable energy after frequent attacks from the Trump administration.
Utility-scale solar generation is expected to churn out 78 billion kilowatt-hours throughout 2026 in Texas’ main power grid, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration. That dwarfs the expected 60 billion kWh from coal power plants in the region, EIA said in a report Wednesday.
Solar’s share of generation within the region managed by the Electric Reliability Council of Texas jumped from 4 percent to 12 percent between 2021 and 2025, EIA found. And Pablo Vegas, the CEO of ERCOT, said at a Texas Senate committee hearing in April that proposed solar projects account for more than one-third of the 450 gigawatts of generation looking to plug into the grid. Batteries are also in high demand.
“Over 75 percent of the total interest is still with solar and battery storage resources,” Vegas said at the hearing. “The economics in our market are still highly favorable to those two resources.”
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Finally, the wait is over. After 20 years of fits and starts, the US automaker Aptera has finally reached a critical milestone. Aptera has a long way to go before it can catch up to industry leader Tesla, but the startup has 50,000 reservations in hand for its solar-powered EVs, and its first five validation vehicles have just rolled off the assembly line.
For those of you following the Aptera saga on and off, yes, the company has encountered more than one hitch along the way, and for a while there it seemed dead in the water. However, persistence pays off.
Aptera launched in 2006, just three years after Tesla entered the scene, but the two companies traveled in vastly different directions.
In 2009, the US Department of Energy tapped Tesla for a $465 million loan guarantee, aimed at driving down the cost of mass-produced electric cars. Tesla paid off the loan in 2013 to much acclaim, and the rest is history.
Aptera was also in line for an Energy Department loan guarantee just two years later, negotiated in 2011. However, the company reportedly failed to engage enough funds from private investors to make the Energy Department’s $150 million offer stick, and it went into liquidation shortly after.
Among the reasons for the sputtering-out was Aptera’s foundational vehicle, a futuristic, battery-electric car that could recharge itself from onboard solar panels. EV batteries and solar panels were much more expensive in the early 2000’s than they are now, and combining them in one vehicle was a tricky business. Other solar-electric automotive innovators also found out the hard way. The solar-powered Scion from the German firm Sono Motors, for example, was full of promise as recently as 2022, only to halt production the following year.
In addition to the cost factor, Aptera’s new EV was not actually a car. It was an autocycle, meaning a three-wheeled vehicle but not a three-wheeled motorcycle. In the US, autocycles are regulated as their own thing. The driver doesn’t need a motorcycle license, just an ordinary driver’s license. The driver also does not straddle the seat or use handlebars, as in a motorcycle. An autocycle seat is sat in just like a standard car seat, and the driver uses a steering wheel. To gild the three-wheeled lily, autocycles can fit the driver and passenger side-by-side in the same carriage.
Autocycles were fairly common in some markets through the mid-20th century, but the bloom was way off the rose by the early 2000’s, particularly in the US.
Aptera 2.0 was a different matter. It took about nine years or so, but Aptera rose from the ashes in 2020 in the form of Aptera Motors Corp., headquartered in Carlsbad, California, with co-CEOs Chris Anthony and Steve Fambro at the helm.
This time around, Aptera was ready to meet the moment, and the autocycle moment was beginning to meet Aptera. In 2024, CleanTechnica noted that the “trippy earthbound space ship” styling of its autocycle was not so trippy any more, considering the emerging interest of other automakers in autocycles with a futuristic flair, Yamaha being one example (here’s another). With the new reboot, Aptera aims to capture autocycle-curious EV buyers who desire a two-in-one vehicle that can be showy and utilitarian as well, suitable for commuting, errand-running, and longer trips.
After that, it was off to the races. In March of 2025, the company released a YouTube video putting its three-wheeler on the road from Arizona to California. “What makes this video important is that the trip was done on one battery in the production-intent build of the vehicle…. While minor changes are still possible, they probably wouldn’t be something the average person nor the enthusiast would be aware of without being told about them. Aptera is that far along in the process,” observed CleanTechnica’s Jennifer Sensiba.
In October of last year, Aptera also announced its transition to the status of a Public Benefit Corporation under Delaware law. “Public Benefit Corporations are a distinct class of companies recognized under Delaware law that balance financial performance with public benefits such as social and environmental responsibility,” the company explained.
“As a PBC, Aptera’s performance is measured not only by economic results, but also by how effectively it promotes its stated public benefit: advancing solar mobility to reduce energy dependence and environmental impact,” the company elaborated.
In March of this year, Aptera recapped its progress towards producing a small batch of vehicles for further validation on a down-scaled production line consisting of 14 work stations. “Vehicles produced on the low-volume validation line are allocated to specific testing programs, including thermal validation, brake performance, and some destructive testing,” Aptera noted.
In the latest development, on May 12, Aptera celebrated the first five vehicles to roll off the low-volume line.
“Each vehicle has been built on Aptera’s low-volume validation assembly line in Carlsbad, California, where trained technicians move through 14 stations using processes designed to scale. Running multiple vehicles through the line in sequence validates not only the vehicle itself, but the system required to build it consistently,” Aptera explained.
With the US economy spiraling downwards, it’s difficult to make the case for a pricey, weird-looking, semi-utilitarian EV. After all, Tesla CEO Elon Musk tried something similar with the Cybertruck, only to see his pet project devolve into an Edsel-worthy sales performance. And no, selling cars to yourself does not count.
The sorry state of the US economy regardless, US President Donald Trump made the case for EVs stronger than ever before after February 28 of this year, when he launched a war against Iran leading to a quick spiral-up in global fuel markets. It remains to be seen if a bump in online interest translates into a significant EV sales bump, particularly here in the moribund market of the US, but Aptera’s focus on a somewhat quirky segment of the upscale market could provide it with foothold.
In addition, Aptera is focusing its small-batch deliveries on bringing down production costs. “With each successive build, the team has improved cycle times, refined workflows, and discovered improvements to carry onto future vehicle builds,” Aptera explains.
The first five EVs are just for starters. “The validation fleet will continue to expand and move through a comprehensive testing program covering road performance, durability, safety verification, software and firmware integration, and real-world solar energy collection,” Aptera explains.
“What we are building here is not just vehicles, but the system to build them well,” co-CEO Fambro emphasized in a press statement. “Each cycle through the line improves precision, efficiency, and repeatability.”
“This is how we plan to meet our customers’ expectations when they finally get their hands on their own Aptera vehicle,” Fambro added for good measure.
Here’s hoping those 50,000 reservations materialize into full-on sales. If all goes according to plan, the to-be-met expectations cover up to 40 miles of solar-powered driving per day, with the solar fuel being free of charge, naturally. That’s more than enough for average daily use. With the battery fully charged, Aptera puts the range at 400 miles.
Interested? The target price is $40,000 and reservations are a modest $100.
Photo: EVs with built-in solar panels have been a tough sell, but the US startup Aptera aims to succeed where others have failed (cropped, courtesy of Aptera).
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Tina has been covering advanced energy technology, military sustainability, emerging materials, biofuels, ESG and related policy and political matters for CleanTechnica since 2009. Follow her @tinamcasey on LinkedIn, Mastodon or Bluesky.
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Photo courtesy Grand Design Recreational Vehicles
MIDDLEBURY, IN—Grand Design Recreational Vehicles is recalling more than 1,200 model year 2025-2026 Lineage motorhomes. The epoxy adhesive securing solar panels to the roof may fail, allowing the panels to detach. 
As many as 1,269 RVs may be affected by the recall, which was issued April 30. The cause of the issue is inadequate adhesion due to incompatibility between the epoxy and the roof and panel.
A detached solar panel can become a road hazard for other vehicles, increasing the risk of a crash and injury. For a motorhome’s driver, there is little or no warning that there is a problem.
To address the problem, dealers will secure the solar panels with mechanical fasteners, free of charge. Owner notification letters are expected to be mailed June 24.

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Invest in Our Future’s Peter Colavito on why funders and advocates should pay more attention to the solar farm down the road.
Up until last September, Wisconsin’s Public Service Commission had gone 14 years without approving a large-scale wind project. But when they met to review the 456 public comments submitted for Badger Hollow, a 118-megawatt project that would straddle Iowa and Grant counties, they found overwhelming support for the proposal. Approval followed.
This wasn’t by chance. For months, groups like the Rural Climate Partnership, Greenlight America, Farm-to-Power, Clean Wisconsin, CivicIQ, and Healthy Climate Wisconsin worked together to build support. They held roundtables with farmers and shot digital ads with testimonials from residents that ran online and at gas stations. They emphasized the nearly $600,000 the project would generate for cash-strapped towns and counties every year to fund things like roads, bridges, and emergency services. And they empowered trusted local voices to make a case grounded in their communities’ values.
The breakthrough in Wisconsin shows how investing in local interventions can accelerate the energy transition — and points the way forward for clean energy advocates trying to navigate federal headwinds.

As skyrocketing electricity demand and soaring costs draw attention to our power systems, clean energy offers a formidable solution. Wind, solar, and storage technologies have matured enough that they can be built quickly and cheaply virtually anywhere, for anyone, at any scale. And now, as the world contends with yet another conflict roiling fossil fuel markets, these energy sources offer a shield from volatility.
Given these clear advantages, it’s worth asking, “Why aren’t clean energy projects moving forward faster in more places?”
Our team at Invest in Our Future has learned a lot in the past three years about the answer.
Invest in Our Future’s creation marked a departure from philanthropy’s longstanding approach to climate and clean energy, which often focused on developing and passing policy to spur reductions in greenhouse gas pollution. Instead, with the Inflation Reduction Act on the books, my organization was formed with a singular focus: maximize the reach and impact of federal clean energy investments in the face of on-the-ground constraints.
Our remit was to ensure this ambitious policy advancing commercially-ready technology resulted in actual projects getting built and benefiting people. That meant mobilizing organizations to raise awareness of IRA programs and incentives and help communities access IRA dollars. It also meant finding a way around the significant barriers that stood in the way of deployment, even with historic levels of government support.
First, utility-scale projects were hit with organized, vocal opposition upset by the prospect of rapid changes to the local landscape and skeptical of out-of-town developers. That resistance often seized on siting and permitting processes to delay or altogether stop projects from being built. And too infrequently did countervailing forces try to speak to their concerns or organize support.

There were also funding problems for more community-oriented projects. In many cases, neither private investors nor public officials fully understood the opportunity or potential returns for projects like rooftop solar for schools, microgrids for hospitals and health centers, or electrified buses that double as mobile batteries during blackouts, leaving a sizable project pipeline struggling to pencil out.
Clean energy employers also struggled to hire, and workers couldn’t see a career path in the sector.
And as media habits changed, and national leaders spread disinformation, clean energy got more polarized.
For some, there was a political logic behind the IRA that suggested new projects would set off a self-reinforcing cycle of support for federal clean energy policy. But building support and real champions takes time. Consider that utility-scale solar projects, for example, need 24 months at minimum just to reach operational status. The work of connecting projects and benefits in the public mind extends further still. With barriers slowing deployment, the advantages of new projects needed time to take root.
Still, where projects did move forward, Invest in Our Future cultivated local validators who could share authentic stories about how clean energy improved their lives. When we mobilized local champions to engage with decisionmakers last year, they left a big impression. But we needed more of them — from more places, drawing value from more projects.
So after Congress repealed much of the IRA last summer, we developed new, interlocking strategies to address the major barriers to deployment and push as many projects forward in as many communities as possible.
By educating local decision-makers early and mobilizing active, vocal support from a wide range of perspectives — farmers and faith leaders, landowners and labor, educators and entrepreneurs — we can boost the number of projects that secure siting and permitting approvals.
By identifying high-potential, commercial-scale community projects with local lenders, packaging them into aggregated investments, and demonstrating low risk and reliable returns, we can draw institutional investors and lower-cost capital toward an otherwise underfunded but important segment.
Setting high and consistent job quality standards across clean energy industries will counter real and perceived concerns around safety, benefits, and wages, helping attract more workers who can go on to serve as advocates for new projects.
And deepening investment in storytelling by local champions will build the credibility of — and, in turn, support for — clean energy projects from the ground up.
Market forces are increasingly and irreversibly favoring clean energy. Influential allies of the president are coming around on solar, and longtime critics of renewables acknowledge that the transition is inevitable. What’s needed most now is a push from the ground up.
Our grantees are delivering it. Their work on siting and permitting, for example, helped gain approval for nearly 20 gigawatts of clean capacity in 2025. That included projects like Wisconsin’s Badger Hollow wind farm and Illinois’s 210-megawatt Glacier Moraine solar project — which was initially denied a permit but triumphed in a reconsideration vote after more than a dozen local residents mobilized to sway public opinion. Greenlight America and their partners managed to win eight permitting campaigns over one week last December alone.

Yet funding for these efforts is limited. Climate solutions receive less than 2% of total giving. Most funding within that segment has long flowed to regulatory and policy-focused work, which made sense while clean energy needed policy support to compete on economics. But today, with clean energy cheaper than fossil fuels in most parts of the country, there’s a real gap between our goals and on-the-ground success that we can bridge by focusing more on getting projects built.
Deploying clean energy at the community level happens to be one of our most effective tools for drawing down greenhouse gas pollution — with the added advantage of helping to lower costs, strengthen economic growth and community resilience, and generate good jobs. Through Invest in Our Future, I’ve met leaders driving progress often in the most challenging places in the country. Despite all the setbacks and discouraging headlines last year brought, these leaders have not lost their sense of urgency, or their resolve to build clean energy. That resolve — and their track record of success — should give us all hope. We should give them our support in return.
Peter Colavito
Peter Colavito is the executive Director at Invest in Our Future.
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On the transformer shortage, sodium batteries, and a space grid
Current conditions: It’s pouring in Boston today, with temperatures that could feel as low as 47 degrees Fahrenheit • Severe flooding in Turkey’s Samsun province has sent a dozen people to the hospital • Bear season in Yellowstone has started earlier than usual, raising the risk of more violent encounters between hikers and grizzlies.
President Donald Trump formally began talks with Chinese president Xi Jinping today as the leaders of the world’s two largest economies seek some kind of rapprochement after more than a year of escalating battles over trade. The discussions are expected to cover a range of topics, including Taiwan’s sovereignty and the market dominance over critical minerals that Foreign Policy called Beijing’s “most potent” tool in the trade negotiations. Indeed, China’s control over critical minerals means Xi “will have the upperhand,” according to the Council on Foreign Relations, which noted that Trump folded last year in his trade battle with Xi once Beijing threatened to restrict flows of rare earths.

While Trump may have hoped that the prolonged closure of the Strait of Hormuz would put Beijing in a more desperate position by the time the summit started, China’s oil market has shown “signs of resilience” that “should concern U.S. officials” as efforts to prop up the domestic supply provide more buoyancy than expected, Semafor reported.
Fervo Energy, until now the hottest startup in the next-generation geothermal industry, is now the hottest stock on the market. On Wednesday, the Houston-based company’s stock began trading on the Nasdaq, where share prices surged nearly 40% by market close. “Geothermal is so hot right now,” Sarah Jewett, Fervo’s senior vice president of strategy, told me in a Q&A for Heatmap. “The IPO is not a finish line for Fervo. It is a financing milestone that facilitates the build out of more clean, firm, reliable, affordable energy. That is what we are most excited about as we ring the bell in Nasdaq. As we celebrate, we are more excited than anything to get back to work, to put clean megawatts in the grid.”
The company, she said, expects to start making overseas development deals soon, and indicated that Fervo may build its first geothermal plants on the East Coast, where hot rocks have historically been too deep to tap into, within a decade.
Nearly 16 years after it was first proposed, New York City’s biggest new source of clean energy has come online, meaning its 1,250 megawatts of capacity will be available to shore up the grid as summer heat waves roast the nation’s largest metropolis. Until recently, New York State regulators had planned for the Champlain Hudson Power Express to enter into service in August. But last weekend, the 339-mile project stretching from Lake Champlain down the Hudson River to the electrical substations in northwestern Queens managed to complete testing just before the state’s hard deadline of May 10 at 5 p.m. ET, after which the developer would have to wait two months before finishing the bureaucratic process to start the clock on the contract between the state and Hydro Quebec, the French-speaking Canadian province’s state-owned utility. That means if prices soar high enough between now and the end of May, Hydro Quebec could choose to bid into the market. But the real milestone is that, starting June 1, the utility’s contract will take effect.

“We didn’t think it was possible. The state didn’t think it was possible. We were counting on capacity coming online in August, but that’s way too late,” Peter Rose, the senior director of stakeholder relations for Hydro Quebec, told me on a call last night. “We have heat waves in July. It’ll be good for New York City to count on that 1,250 megawatts of capacity going into July.” Since the Blackstone-backed project’s inception, its proponents have suggested hydropower from Quebec would ultimately supply 20% of New York City’s power needs. But two weeks ago, when Hydro Quebec ran 13 hours of trial runs to stress test its equipment, the line provided more than 33% of the city’s power for a part of that duration. That, Rose cautioned, was probably due to relatively low load. Still, he said, “Unbeknownst to everybody during the testing regime, a third of our consumption in New York City was coming from this project. Those were specific conditions. But still pretty remarkable.”
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Solar is now the third-largest electricity source in Texas.EIA
Texas, newly-crowned the nation’s No. 1 solar market, has installed enough panels that the state is now generating more electricity from photovoltaics than coal for the first time. Solar generation is expected to reach 78 billion killowatt-hours in 2026 in the grid operated by the Electric Reliability Council of Texas, according to the latest forecast from the Energy Information Administration. That comes to just 60 billion kilowatt-hours for coal. As Texas’ solar boom continues, the federal researchers projected that about 40% of all solar installations in the U.S. this year will occur in the Lone Star State. Among the developments poised to come online this year is the solar and battery megaproject Tehuacana Creek 1 Solar farm. The 837-megawatt project will be the largest solar facility of its kind to enter into service this year. Meanwhile, Texas has no current plans for new coal plants.
The U.S. is going to need a lot more projects coming online. New forecasts from the National Electrical Manufacturers Association project U.S. electricity demand to surge 55% by 2050. Data centers are the biggest source of near-term demand growth, with a projected 300% surge in electricity demand over the next 10 years. But electric vehicles of all kinds are on track to keep the party going by spiking power demand 2,000% by the middle of the century. To meet that demand, storage, wind, and solar generation are on track to increase by 300% as renewables start making up a majority of the generation in the American West, New York, and the Southeast.

As I told you two weeks ago, Belgium is not only abandoning its plans to phase out its remaining nuclear power stations, it’s nationalizing the fleet. Now Brussels is entering into a deal with the pro-nuclear neighboring Netherlands to work together on building new reactors. The memorandum of understanding — signed Wednesday at a binational summit by Belgium’s energy minister Mathieu Bihet and Dutch climate and green growth chief Jo-Annes de Bat — establishes periodic meetings between the two nations, where the Netherlands can tap into Belgium’s existing knowledge from operating a larger fleet of reactors, and the Belgians can in turn garner tips on building new reactors as the Dutch embark on a construction program.
Pakistan’s solar boom has so far insulated the country from the full effects of losing access to oil and gas through the Strait of Hormuz. Now Islamabad is going all in. Pakistan is now targeting 95% renewable electricity by 2040, and 60% by 2030, according to a document seen by the business news site ProPakistani.
Corpus Christi is on the verge of running out of water. Stopping it would take a disaster.
Even in its frontier days, when it was a camp for General Zachary Taylor’s forces defending the border of newly annexed Texas, there was barely enough water in Corpus Christi to go around. The Tejanos, Americanos, and old Spanish ranchers crazy (or unlucky) enough to settle on the edge of this growing empire survived by drinking from arroyos, cisterns, and foul, sulphuric wells. The native Karankawa people lived nomadically to avoid straining the region’s streams, springs, and shallow groundwater resources.
You can follow Corpus’ subsequent history through the twists and turns of what historian Alan Lessoff calls the “endless search for a larger and more adequate water supply” in his book Where Texas Meets the Sea: Corpus Christi and Its History — the damming of local rivers, the failure of those dams, massive Depression-era reservoir projects, groundwater running dry, the consolidation of regional water districts, an expensive project to pipe in fresh water from 100 miles away, an even more expensive project to produce it on the spot. Take your pick of cities west of the 98th meridian: Phoenix, Las Vegas, Los Angeles. They’ve all followed similar beats.

But Corpus — never a superlative city, a chip on its shoulder that goes back to Taylor’s time — is now close to the inglorious distinction of becoming the first American metropolis to run out of water. Though it’s located on the shores of the Gulf of Mexico, its fresh water reservoirs sit at less than 10% of their total capacity; Day Zero will arrive in November unless there’s 20 to 30 inches of rainfall before then. Those are hurricane numbers, an unsettling thing upon which to hang one’s hope.
But that’s what desperation does. You hope for the second-worst thing because it’s better than the alternative.

The first sign that something had gone very wrong in Corpus Christi came in 2016. Over the course of 10 months — in July 2015, September 2015, and May 2016 — the city issued 22 days’ worth of water-boil notices for possible E. coli contamination, low chlorine levels, and the presence of indicator bacteria suggesting low disinfectant levels. The water quality problems appeared to stem from restrictions Corpus officials had ordered during a recent drought, when low flow through old pipes can create “dead zones” for bacteria to grow between the treatment plants and home taps.
Then came December 14, 2016. Late in the evening, the city issued the strictest water advisory yet for its 317,000 residents — a “do not use” order stemming from a corrosive chemical that had leaked into the town’s water supply due to backflow from a local asphalt plant. The notice, which pertained to everything from drinking water to tooth-brushing and showering, lasted for four days.

“Our group connected at an emergency meeting and committed to start learning as much as we could about the city’s water policies and problems,” Isabel Araiza, the co-founder of For the Greater Good, a grassroots organization focused on protecting Corpus Christi’s water supply, told me. “I really had not been paying attention prior to that.”
It turned out the chemical leak was only the tip of the iceberg. City officials in the 1920s and 1930s had recognized Corpus Christi as a strategic shipping location, the closest American port to the Panama Canal, and had dredged a channel into its shallow inner bay that allowed large ships to come and go — at the time, mostly shuttling the region’s cotton exports. Following the discovery of oil to the west of the city a few years later, though, the channel enabled Corpus to begin exporting petroleum products. Industry pounced.
“Why are there so many cement factories and inorganic chemical plants and metal manufacturers [in Corpus Christi]?” Lessoff, the historian, asked me. “It’s because of all the energy they need. And those things also need a lot of water.”
Though the city was competing with the humid, semitropical petroleum hubs in Houston and Louisiana, where water is less of a concern, Corpus Christi pressed forward, even as its residential population quadrupled. By the end of the 1950s, industry-related uses accounted for almost 40% of water demand in Nueces County, of which Corpus represents as much as 90% of the population. “If you’re a city official, you’re looking at this growth, and you’re telling yourself, ‘Well, we’ll figure it out,’” Lessoff said of the ballooning problem.
The situation took a turn in late 2015, when Congress repealed the 1975 export ban on crude oil. Corpus was perfectly positioned to capitalize on the opportunity, given its proximity to the extraction operations in Eagle Ford and the Permian Basin, its deep shipping channel, and its industrial base. Billions of dollars in investment in new plants soon poured into a city waiting with open arms.
Corpus officials at the time assured ExxonMobil, among other chemical companies, that its $10 billion plastics facility, which opened in 2018, would have sufficient water available to it for the “foreseeable future” despite the plant using 25 million gallons per day during its peak production — enough to meet the needs of a family of four for 170 years. To Steel Dynamics, a year later, the city promised an additional 6 million gallons of water per day. “We have enough now to attract development and keep our lawns and parks green,” then-mayor Joe McComb boasted in 2018 when revoking drought restrictions that he claimed “gave a false sense that we were always running out of water.”

Beginning in 2018, the largest industrial water users in Corpus were also offered the option to pay a voluntary, year-round “drought surcharge exemption” rather than face larger financial penalties when a drought emergency is declared. The exemption charge of just 31 cents per 1,000 gallons is effectively a rounding error for companies like Exxon or Valero, and about 10 companies in the area take advantage of the program.
The city’s blasé attitude stemmed in part from its bet that desalination plants would come to its rescue. When they approved the new influx of manufacturing in 2018, Corpus leaders acknowledged that a new city-owned desalination facility needed to be up and running by “early 2023” to fill anticipated gaps in its natural water supply. Preliminary plans weren’t even presented to the city council, though, until 2019.
By 2022, a year before the city’s estimated deadline for needing the water, there were plans for five desalination plants around Corpus Christi Bay, including two that would have been city-owned. (City officials said the astronomical cost of building a plant — around $1 billion — would be offset by the drought surcharge exemption fund, which only brings in around $6 million per year.) Groups like For the Greater Good and the Sierra Club fought hard against the city’s plan for a desalination plant in the shallow Inner Harbor, arguing that the freshwater it produced would prop up industry, allowing it to continue its insatiable consumption, much as critics of carbon capture have argued that the technology would allow fossil fuel companies to continue emitting and running their businesses as usual.
“We as residents are not using the majority of this water, so there is no reason why we should have to subsidize any kind of infrastructure that’s primarily beneficial to private corporations,” Chloe Torres, the Coastal Bend regional coordinator for Texas Campaign for the Environment, which opposed the desalination plant, told me. “Even by the rules of capitalism, that’s a tough sell.”
Coastal desalination relies on reverse osmosis, a process that filters salt out of seawater and would discharge the hypersaline brine back into the shallow bay. “When I was living there in the 1990s, desalination was like, Who would want to do something like that?” Lessoff, the historian, told me. “It’s outrageous because of the energy involved, the environmental factors, and the effect on these estuaries.”

It was also in 2022 that national environmental groups helped elect two candidates to the city council, Jim Klein, the former president of the Coastal Bend Sierra Club, and Sylvia Campos, who said they’d focus on holding industry accountable for its water usage. By some estimates, industry was guzzling as much as 80% of Corpus’ available water supply, with residents using just a fraction. The 2022 election was critical because “desalination is not done through voter approval,” Campos told me. “It is done through the city council purposely so the citizens really don’t have a say.” For the several-hundred-thousand people who live in the metropolitan area surrounding Corpus, who can’t vote in the city elections but are subject to its decisions as wholesale purchasers of its water, the situation is even less democratic.
Heading into 2024, national climate and environmental groups such as Lead Locally and the Sierra Club again endorsed a slate of candidates who opposed desalination. But industry had wised up since 2022, and spent big on the race. Environmental candidates got clobbered — Klein lost his election for an at-large council seat; Araiza, the co-founder of For the Greater Good, lost her mayoral bid by 36 points; and four other city council hopefuls also failed in their bids.
Voters returned only Campos to the city council, but it wasn’t because of their environmental concerns. “When I was knocking on their doors, they weren’t talking to me about water,” she told me.
In purple Corpus Christi, Campos, a self-described socialist, told me she convinced other city council members to turn against the desalination plans by arguing that a billion-dollar investment in a plant producing only 30 million gallons of freshwater per day didn’t make financial sense. In September 2025, in a 6-3 vote, the city council killed the Inner Harbor desalination proposal — a move that prompted Moody’s, S&P, and Fitch to either downgrade or review the city’s credit rating given the “unexpected acceleration of water depletion risk.” William Chriss, a third-generation Corpus Christian and local political analyst, told me, “I don’t think [the city council] necessarily changed their minds about the need for a desal plant. I think they changed their minds about the cost of this particular desal plant.”
Indeed, the need for water hadn’t gone away. Corpus’ water department has said that about 70% of residents already use less than a proposed restriction of 5,250 gallons per month. First-time violators who exceed that amount could face a $500 fee; a proposed penalty for second-time violators would see their water shut off.

Under a proposal floated this week, residential customers could use up to 6,000 gallons per month, while industrial customers would be forced to adhere to a 25% cut in their average water use between 2022 and 2024 — and face water shutoffs if they don’t comply.
The big industrial consumers like Exxon, Valero, and Flint Hills Resources have so far refused to disclose how they would adjust their operations in order to meet such reductions on the grounds that it’s proprietary information, as Dylan Baddour has reported in his ongoing coverage of the crisis for Inside Climate News. (Exxon and Valero failed to return our request for comment. A spokesperson for Flint Hills, which runs two crude oil refineries in Corpus, told me in a statement that the company is “optimistic we will be able to manage the potential curtailment scenarios without significantly disrupting our operations,” and pointed me toward its plans to use up to 2 million gallons per day of treated city wastewater for its operations.)
Texas Governor Greg Abbott has warned Corpus Christi’s leadership that there is “only … a little time more before the state of Texas has to take over” managing the water crisis, and blasted the city for “squandering” a $750 million loan commitments from the Texas Water Development Board, most of which had been designated exclusively for the construction of the Inner Harbor desalination plant. President Trump has also visited the Port of Corpus Christi and floated funding a revived Inner Harbor desalination project. “This is called a serious money ask, and I’m going to get that thing approved for you guys,” he told the local media. Last week, the Corpus Christi City Council voted 6-2 to begin talks with AXE H2O, a private company seeking to build a desalination plant with the city’s guarantee of a 30-year water purchase agreement.
Campos was one of the “no” votes, expressing skepticism about the “too good to be true” proposal, which would dump its high-saline discharge into the deeper gulf rather than the isolated bay, theoretically lessening the environmental impact. But its energy-intensive process would also run on natural gas, likely via on-site turbines, which its chairman said would keep its water costs lower than regional competitors as prices on the Texas grid tend to vary wildly. (Corpus Christi Polymers, which is constructing its own desalination plant, has also solicited the city for a purchasing agreement.) There is also the inherent irony of using fossil fuels to fix a problem created by fossil fuels.

A new desalination plant also does little to solve the immediate crisis, leaving Corpus in the most desperate position of its long history. A worst-case scenario would involve shutting off the tap for industry and facing its lawyers in court; limiting or rotating residential water availability; or trucking in water to manually refill the cisterns, as Baddour has reported. “The lead time that it takes to fix some of these problems just does not allow for a head-in-the-sand approach,” Amy Hardberger, the director of the Center for Water Law and Policy at Texas Tech in Lubbock, told me, having watched the situation unfold from afar. “But I don’t want to vilify Corpus,” she added. “I just think they’re getting to this point a little ahead of other cities.”
Some optimists have entertained the idea that a major rainfall could potentially break the region’s drought and buy Corpus a little more time to find a way out of its current water crisis. “The only alternatives that exist for Corpus Christi between now and three years from now at the earliest” — when a desalination plant could be up and running — “are a series of hurricanes or tropical storms that will miraculously fill our reservoir,” Chriss, the political analyst, said.
But Lessoff, the historian, gasped when I suggested a hurricane might relieve some of the pressure on Corpus. “If you want to have the biggest environmental disaster in American history, go ahead,” he said in disbelief.
The city is a catastrophe waiting to happen, Lessoff went on. Because of its low-lying chemical plants and petroleum refineries, if or when a climate change-strengthened hurricane makes landfall on the Coastal Bend, “it’ll make the BP disaster in the Gulf look like nothing,” he said. In other words, if there were ever a way to make Corpus Christians nostalgic for a mere 22 days of boil-water notices, then a direct hit by a hurricane would be it.

But that also means, perversely, that the best outcome might be for Corpus to have to sit with the consequences of over 100 years of bad water policy, deference to industry, and electing officials more interested in economic boosterism than protecting the limited resources for its residents. If any good comes out of the situation, it might be that other cities in the urban southwest learn from Corpus’ mistakes.
“It doesn’t help me to say ‘I told you so’ when there’s no water coming out of my tap,” Hardberger, the water policy expert, said. “It’s like, ‘Please don’t put me in that position. I want to live here, too. This is my home. Please work with me.’”
Talking with SVP of strategy Sarah Jewett about the competition, expansion plans, and how to get more Americans informed and onboard.
Just three years ago, enthusiasm for geothermal energy was lukewarm at best. In a sign of just how marginal it seemed, the firehose of federal money directed at clean energy investments under the Biden administration contained just $84 million for geothermal, specifically for next-generation technologies. By contrast, the next-generation nuclear industry received roughly 40 times more.
Geothermal electricity generation uses heat from the Earth’s molten core to spin turbines that generate carbon-free, 24/7, renewable energy — a pretty attractive offer in today’s age of rampant climate change and soaring demand. Though the technology has been in use since 1913, it’s been stymied since then by the industry’s dependence on finding rare and unique underground reservoirs of hot water.
Then in 2023, a little-known startup backed by Bill Gates, among others, achieved a breakthrough at a pilot project in Nevada, showing that fracking technology could be used to harvest energy from hot, dry rocks, which can be found virtually anywhere in the world.

Fervo Energy’s announcement hit the geothermal industry’s smoldering embers like a splash of gasoline. Investors saw a reliable new source of carbon-free electricity that could tap into existing oil and gas supply chains and workforces and clamored to put their money into the startup, which had raised roughly $1.5 billion from private investors prior to the IPO. As the need for more energy to power data centers for artificial intelligence has grown, that interest has only intensified. Case in point: The company actually upsized its initial public offering on the Nasdaq stock exchange this week.
The money from the IPO, the company said in its initial filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, would go to Fervo’s flagship installation at its debut 500-megawatt Cape Station plant in Utah. When all was said and done after the company’s Tuesday debut, it had netted nearly $1.9 billion — about 50% more than the initially planned $1.3 billion. When trading picked up again on Wednesday, the price soared more than 30%, to over $36 per share.
Late Wednesday afternoon, I spoke to Sarah Jewett, Fervo’s senior vice president of strategy, to discuss the IPO and what’s next for the company. The transcript of our conversation, conducted over Zoom, has been lightly edited for clarity and length.
Congratulations, Fervo has just made quite the stock market debut. Just a few days ago, the company upsized its initial public offering. Then yesterday, when the FRVO ticker officially launched at the Nasdaq, you ended up raising nearly $1.9 billion, beyond the $1.3 billion you initially anticipated. You must be feeling pretty good today.
I’m teeing you up for the pun here, Alexander: Geothermal is so hot right now. The IPO is not a finish line for Fervo. It is a financing milestone that facilitates the build out of more clean, firm, reliable, affordable energy. That is what we are most excited about as we ring the bell in Nasdaq. As we celebrate, we are more excited than anything to get back to work, to put clean megawatts in the grid.

Well then, let’s drill down on that. What were you seeing from investors before the IPO?
Investors, when we went around to sell, sell, sell , they were familiar with the need for energy. They were familiar with what’s happening in tech and AI. They were familiar with the existing solutions for power. They saw us as a new entrant into the scene that is highly capable of bearing the weight of resolving this intense energy crunch. Because of that, as we sold our story over the IPO roadshow, we just saw insane demand and decided it was the right idea to upsize the round.
Beyond the big player in conventional geothermal, Ormat Technologies, there haven’t really been many pure-play options in the retail market for people who want a piece of the action more broadly within geothermal. Where do you draw the line between where investors are buying into Fervo, specifically, and where they are buying into geothermal, generally?
These are really sophisticated investors. It’s overly reductive to say they’re just investing in us because we are a leading contender in an interesting industry to them. These are sophisticated investors who have vetted our technology, our performance, our execution to date, how we think about growth. They really bought into that story, specifically, as being a story that they believe to have real sustainability.
Where do you see the biggest potential competition? Do you think it will come from an incumbent player who makes a pivot into the next-generation market? Or do you think one of these other startups in the mix such as Sage Geosystems or XGS Energy or Quaise Energy could find similar success to Fervo?
We’re driving a rising tide that should lift all boats. I’m not going to publicly place bets on who I think will be the closest follower. But I’m hopeful that we will start to see more successful competitors in the years to come. The market that we’re addressing is massive right now. Because of that, we should see enhanced competition going forward. In some ways, we would be disappointed if that weren’t the case. We have developed a technological solution that is really meaningful. It should encourage others to come try to do the same.
Fervo is really differentiated in the years of execution that we have under our belt. At this point in time, we’ve drilled 40 horizontal geothermal wells. That is a huge differentiating factor at this point in time. The demand is here now. We are well positioned to meet that demand in a way that is rapidly scalable. We are in the right place at the right time.

We like to say internally that, coming to this point, we didn’t have to contend with Fervo. Now competitors will have to contend with Fervo. We obviously believe in the geothermal energy industry, which is why we’ve been so public with publishing our data and talking about what we’re trying to do. But we do really think that we have a substantial lead on the market, just in execution. And then, of course, we have immense amounts of IP and data and learnings to go with it.
Do you plan for the primary business to remain electricity production? Do you foresee going into industrial heat, or district heating in Europe?
We will pursue all of those as business lines in the future. Right now, we are proving ourselves to be uniquely good at delivering power projects. That will be our focus for the near term.
I know you have been focused on the U.S. Where are you looking internationally?
The U.S. is a substantial market at this point in time, so while we do plenty of business development outside of the United States, right now we’re focused on developing at home.
How long will it take for the company and for the industry more broadly to start developing overseas projects in a big way?
We’re close to that already. It’s just a question of what is smart from a business model perspective, and when the timing is right. I’m probably not at liberty to say right now when the timing will be right to really lean into a thriving export side of the business.
If you had to estimate, what would you say is the share of your investors now who are classic energy investors — the types of people who would have been buying into or did buy into shale — versus the share you think are motivated by climate concerns and the clean energy potential of what geothermal is doing? Obviously I realize there’s plenty of overlap. But if you had to discern between those camps, where would you say you’re more indexed?
I would say the majority of energy sector specialists who are investing in this deal are either technology agnostic or are focused on the clean energy side of the business. We do have some marquee shale investors that we will be bringing on as part of the public offering that we’re really, really excited about. So, it’s probably a healthy mix.

Is the shale industry the best analog for how you expect geothermal to scale?
Certainly on the subsurface side it is the closest analog to what we’re doing. We are taking technology that was developed for the shale industry in the subsurface, then we’re deploying it in a similar fashion, which is just over and over and over repeated wells to ensure that we are learning at a really rapid rate and then achieving cost reduction on a learning curve in a single basin. That is a big part of our cost reduction story.
The other thing that we talk a lot about internally is bringing a manufacturing mindset to geothermal energy. It is an industry that has historically been much more akin to a construction industry, building bespoke projects that are tailored for a bespoke commercial need. That is not what we’re trying to do. We’re trying to build a much more scalable business. In order to build a scalable business, you have to establish what is the unit that you are standardizing around and iterating upon. We intend to standardize our design, and iterate and optimize off of a standardized design to allow us to move really fast and to get a lot better, to pull costs out of the business and to be able to scale.
Given how much faster you guys are coming to market, obviously, you have an advantage here over some of the new nuclear technologies being promoted right now. Do you think geothermal is mostly going to eat into the potential market that those could serve? Or do you see nuclear as having different use cases than what geothermal can do?
It’s an overlapping use case, for sure. We don’t talk a lot about eating market share, because the pie is really, really large right now.
How soon before we can anticipate building enhanced geothermal systems on the East Coast and in the Northeast, places where the subsurface heat is not as easily accessible as in the Southwest?
We like to remind people that the demand in the West is massive right now. Probably 18 months ago, we weren’t having as productive conversations with hyperscalers about siting the West as we are today. Today we are having tons and tons of conversations about siting and co-locating alongside geothermal projects in the Western U.S. So the market is really big. We like to mention that just to remind people that expansion is not the only marker of success here.

That said, there is hot rock everywhere, it’s just a question of how deep that hot rock is. We, through our standardized and iterative and repetitive approach in the subsurface, are meaningfully driving cost out of the subsurface, making depth much more of an economic question. If it is more expensive to drill to a certain depth but you already pulled an immense amount of cost per foot out of your drilling, then temperature at depth becomes more accessible even when it’s deeper.
Because drilling is just a portion of the capex of these projects, and a power plant doesn’t care whether it’s located in the West or the East, we basically think that we can move into the Eastern U.S. sooner than we probably had originally thought. It is our goal to do that sometime in the next decade.
In the scant polling I have seen on partisan attitudes on geothermal, most American voters are unaware of it, but among those who are, there seems to be a pretty close match to nuclear in terms of emerging as a rare purple form of energy with closely aligned support between Democrats and Republicans. As you grow, how are you thinking about maintaining that broad appeal and reaching more of those Americans still in the dark?
We benefit from being in an incredibly bipartisan seat right now, and that has been so helpful for our growth and development and is very important to us to maintain going forward. There’s no reason why it shouldn’t be bipartisan. It is a story that is relatable to all. We are highly adjacent to the oil and gas supply chain and oil and gas workforce. We are reliable energy. We are driving towards affordability. We are a clean energy industry with no operating emissions. And really, more than anything, we’re trying to build in a sustainable fashion. We’re trying to deliver projects the right way. It’s something that we have really been able to gain support on both sides of the aisle.

Obviously, that’s been hugely beneficial as we think about extending tax credits. Geothermal energy benefited from increasing tax credits under the Inflation Reduction Act, under President Biden. Then President Trump preserved geothermal energies tax credits in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act. That was hugely helpful to Fervo’s early development.
As we look to bring the cost of the technology down, we hope to continue educating a large group of stakeholders about this technology going forward, and continuing to bring people along with the story, no matter which side of the aisle they sit on.

source

Chilean company Atamostec is testing low-silver heterojunction solar modules under real desert conditions at the Atacama Desert Solar Platform (PSDA) in partnership with France’s CEA-Ines. The ALPACA project has so far achieved up to 70% silver substitution with copper.
Image: Atamostec
From pv magazine Latam
Atamostec, a private-public initiative supported by Chile’s government-run Production Development Corp, has begun testing heterojunction (HJT) solar modules produced with low silver content in the Atacama Desert, in Chile’s Antofagasta region.
The performance of the panels is being assessed at the Atacama Desert Solar Platform (PSDA) in partnership with the National Solar Energy Institute (Ines) under the French Alternative Energies and Atomic Energy Commission (CEA). The facility enables assessment of performance, efficiency, and durability in a real-world environment ahead of potential commercial scaling.
The ALPACA research project focuses evaluates different levels of silver-to-copper substitution in HJT modules. According to Atamostec, testing has achieved replacement rates of around 40%, and in some cases up to 70%, which the company says exceed international benchmarks reported to date under real operating conditions.
“The ALPACA project represents a concrete step toward a new generation of more efficient and sustainable photovoltaic technologies. By replacing silver with copper – a material abundant in Chile – we reduce costs and dependence on critical materials, while strengthening the country’s capacity to lead technological development with global impact,” said Felipe Valencia Arroyave, technology manager at Atamostec.
“Validating these advances under real-world conditions, such as those in the Atacama Desert, is key to accelerating their adoption in the industry,” Valencia added.
Atamostec and Ines, along with industrial partners such as ICS Konstanz, France’s Engie, Chile’s Colbun and Spain’s Mondragon Assembly, are also testing bifacial modules at the PSDA in the Atacama Desert, which is the world’s region with the highest solar radiation levels.
CEA-Ines is currently developing the HJT technology in partnership with PV manufacturer 3Sun, which is a unit of Italian energy company Enel. The two companies have also jointly developed DC/DC maximum power point trackers (MPPT). They are also working on high-efficiency bifacial PV panels.

 
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Interior Sec Burgum Mocked In Congress After Warning Solar Panels ‘Produce Zero Electricity’ When The Sun Goes Down  International Business Times
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New research reveals that particulate matter from coal-fired plants acts as a "hidden drag" by blocking sunlight from reaching solar panels.
A global interaction between fossil fuel emissions and renewable energy is creating a significant barrier to the green transition, according to a study published in Nature Sustainability. Researchers found that atmospheric aerosols reduced global solar electricity output by 5.8% in 2023.
The energy loss, totaling 111 terawatt-hours, is equivalent to the annual generation of 18 medium-sized coal-fired power plants. Using satellite data to map 140,000 installations, a team from the University of Oxford and University College London found that the expansion of coal and solar capacity side by side, particularly in China, directly undermines renewable performance.
While solar capacity is growing rapidly, aerosol-related losses from existing systems reached 74.0 terawatt-hours annually between 2017 and 2023. This figure represents nearly one-third of the average yearly gains from new solar capacity. The findings suggest that the effectiveness of the energy transition may be overestimated if air quality is not managed in tandem with infrastructure.
China, the world’s leading solar producer, saw the most significant impact, with output reduced by 7.7% due to pollution. Researchers traced approximately 29% of these losses directly to coal-fired generation. Fine particles emitted by these plants scatter radiation and alter cloud formations, further reducing the light available for photovoltaic cells.
Despite these challenges, the study highlighted that China is the only major region showing sustained improvement in solar clarity. Losses there declined by roughly 1.4% annually over the last decade, a trend researchers attribute to stricter emission standards and ultra-low-emission technologies.
Experts warn that failing to account for these pollution-induced losses could lead governments to miscalculate progress toward climate goals. The study advocates for shifting fossil-fuel subsidies away from coal to address the problem at its source and improve the real-world efficiency of global solar networks.
About the Author
Jesse Jacobs is Assistant Editor of EPOnline.com.

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