solar Archives — EnviroPolitics Blog

DIY solar is all the rage in Europe. Why not here?

By Todd Woody in Bloomberg Green Daily

As electricity prices soar and rooftop solar subsidies vanish, some US renters and homeowners are surreptitiously installing solar panels on balconies and backyards without their utility’s permission. Legislation recently introduced in nearly two dozen states would legalize “plug-in solar” systems, jumpstarting a nascent market for an affordable renewable energy source.

Also called balcony solar, these systems typically consist of two to four solar panels connected to wall outlets. They typically cost $2,000 or more and generate enough electricity to power a refrigerator, electronics, and lights, potentially reducing utility bills by several hundred dollars a year. Some plug-in solar systems include batteries to store power for use during peak demand, when electricity rates spike, and during storms or heat waves that knock out the grid.

Millions of balcony solar systems have been deployed in countries like Germany, which regulates the technology. But only about 5,000 have been installed in the US, according to advocates, most without utility authorization. That’s because plug-in solar has remained in the shadows due to a lack of safety standards and often costly requirements imposed by utilities, but that’s changing. Utah in 2025 enacted a law allowing plug-in solar without utility approval, and other states are considering similar legislation, including New York and California, the nation’s largest solar market.

“The impact of California passing legislation would be huge and will get manufacturers to come into the market,” said Kevin Chou, cofounder and executive director of Bright Saver, a Bay Area nonprofit that sells do-it-yourself plug-in solar systems and has pushed to legalize the technology.

Under California legislation introduced in January, residents may install plug-in solar systems without utility authorization. But those systems couldn’t generate more than 1.2 kilowatts of electricity and must be certified by a nationally recognized testing lab. Legislation in other states contains similar requirements.

Utah’s Republican-dominated legislature unanimously approved a plug-in solar bill in 2025, and the state’s Republican governor signed it into law. Although pro-renewable energy Democrats hold a supermajority in the California legislature, the bill introduced by state Senator Scott Wiener, who is running to replace US Representative Nancy Pelosi, is likely to face opposition from some landlords, homeowner associations, and utilities, according to Chou.

Utilities have expressed concern about plug-in solar’s impact on grid balancing if systems feed excess electricity into the network without their knowledge. Landlords may worry about solar panels falling off balconies or how they change the look of a building, he said. Homeowners associations, which regulate everything from house colors to landscaping, may object to the aesthetics of backyard solar.

California’s three big investor-owned utilities currently require plug-in solar owners to apply and secure approval to interconnect to the grid, just as owners of rooftop solar must do.

Chou estimates that more than a thousand plug-in solar systems have been installed in California. But PG&E and San Diego Gas & Electric have not yet received any interconnection applications for the equipment, according to spokespeople.

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‘Zombie’ as pipeline raises environmental fear in New Jersey

By Brenda Flanagan, NJ Spotlight News

Opponents are on guard again over a revived proposal to carry natural gas from Pennsylvania through New Jersey — including along the seabed in Raritan Bay — into Queens, New York.

They call it the “zombie pipeline” because, after being killed twice by legal challenges and permit denials that spanned almost a decade, the project has come back to life.

Oklahoma-based Williams/Transco is behind the attempted revival of the Northeast Supply Enhancement Pipeline. The pipeline, which would generate energy only for New York, would also require a new compressor station in Franklin Township, Somerset County.

Revived natural gas pipeline plan includes major disturbances in Raritan Bay.

Opponents say the construction of an underwater pipeline would expose New Jersey to all of the risks and pollution with zero benefits. Greg Remaud, CEO of NY/NJ Baykeeper, said he believes Raritan Bay would be irreparably harmed.

“Raritan Bay, it’s just an incredible recreational and ecological treasure,” Remaud said. “I mean, there’s boating, sailing, crabbing, world-class fishing for bluefish, striped bass, fluke. It supports kelp, which is what whales feed on, and supports lots of other fish. There’s a commercial crabbing industry here. So, to run a needless pipeline across twenty-three miles of Raritan Bay, going through wetlands and then slicing through marine habitat and clam beds, it makes no sense to us.”

Remaud is concerned that construction would disturb toxic heavy metals, such as copper and mercury, buried in the bay’s sediments — a relic of New Jersey’s industrial past.

Undoing ‘good environmental work’

“Now $175 million is going to clean up the Raritan Bay Slag Superfund site, which is right adjacent to where the NESE pipeline would be going in,” Remaud said. “All this money is being spent to remove lead, but copper, mercury, and other contaminants are being re-suspended into the water column? So it really makes no sense, and the stakes are even higher because we’re undoing really good environmental work on the Raritan Bayshore,” he added.

Read the full story

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Homeowners scramble as solar tax credit deadline expires soon

*File photo: Installing solar panels on a residential rooftop*

By Benjamin J. Hulac, Washington Correspondent, NJ Spotlight

WASHINGTON — After Congress voted to end a federal tax credit for rooftop solar installations, homeowners are galloping to buy, install, and hook up, panels to their houses before the year is out.

As part of President Donald Trump’s signature new domestic policy law, lawmakers voted to phase out a 30% tax credit for residential solar, which could defray about $9,000 of the cost of a project, on Dec. 31, roughly a decade before the scheduled date.

Now homeowners are racing to purchase, rack, and connect solar panels to the electric grid to meet that deadline.

“It is a rush,” Lyle Rawlings, president and co-founder of the Mid-Atlantic Solar & Storage Industries Association, said in an interview with NJ Spotlight News. “Anybody who’s been thinking and dreaming of doing solar on their home understands that they have to do it now.”

Solar companies are struggling to keep up with demand, said Rawlings, president of Advanced Solar Projects, a commercial solar company based in Flemington. “Salespeople are overloaded.”

Surge of interest in NJ

After Congress passed the new law, online solar marketplace EnergySage hit an “all-time high in customer inquiries in July,” the company said, and the number of New Jersey customers who registered to receive quotes from local installers increased 109% from June to July, according to data from the firm. “Pedal to the metal right now,” Emily Walker, director of content and insights at EnergySage, said in an interview with NJ Spotlight News.

Expiration of the credit lands as the U.S. solar industry is under strain from Trump’s tariffs, trade disputes, a hazy business outlook, and a federal administration hostile to renewable energy, solar included.

Over the summer, the Environmental Protection Agency canceled $7 billion in funding for solar grants, hundreds of millions of which had been slated for New Jersey.

Even before the budget law took effect, the residential solar industry was already in trouble. Solar installations dropped 31% in 2024, versus the previous year, and large companies in the field — SunPower, Sunnova, and Mosaic Solar — filed for bankruptcy.

The new federal law, which almost every Republican in Congress voted for and every Democrat voted against, also phased out a 30% federal tax incentive for commercial-scale solar projects — the sort of installations that might go atop a big-box store.

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In The Race to Power the Future, China Is Pulling Away

Robots at a Zeekr electric vehicle factory in China.
Qilai Shen for The New York Times

By David Gelles in New York; Somini Sengupta in Brasília and in Tirunelveli, India; Keith Bradsher in Beijing; and Brad Plumer in Washington.

In China, more wind turbines and solar panels were installed last year than in the rest of the world combined. And China’s clean energy boom is going global. Chinese companies are building electric vehicle and battery factories in Brazil, Thailand, Morocco, Hungary and beyond.

At the same time, in the United States, President Trump is pressing Japan and South Korea to invest “trillions of dollars” in a project to ship natural gas to Asia. General Motors just killed plans to make electric motors at a factory near Buffalo, N.Y., and instead will put $888 million into building V-8 gasoline engines there. And this week, Congress rewrote American energy policy to strongly favor fossil fuels over cleaner alternatives like solar, wind and EVs.

The race is on to define the future of energy.

Even as the dangers of global warming hang ominously over the planet, two of the most powerful countries in the world, the United States and China, are pursuing divergent energy strategies defined mainly by economic and national security concerns, as opposed to the climate crisis. Entire industries are at stake, along with the economic and geopolitical alliances that shape the modern world.

The Trump administration wants to keep the world hooked on fossil fuels like oil and gas, which have powered cars and factories, warmed homes and fueled empires for more than a century. The United States is the world’s largest producer of oil and the largest exporter of natural gas, offering the potential for what Mr. Trump has called an era of American “energy dominance” that eliminates dependence on foreign countries, particularly rival powers like China.

China is racing in an altogether different direction. It’s banking on a world that runs on cheap electricity from the sun and wind, and that relies on China for affordable, high-tech solar panels and turbines. China, unlike the United States, doesn’t have much easily accessible oil or gas of its own relative to its huge population. So it is eager to eliminate dependence on imported fossil fuels and instead power more of its economy with renewables.

The dangers for China of relying on politically unstable regions for energy were underscored recently when Israel attacked Iran, which sells practically all its oil exports to China.

While China still burns more coal than the rest of the world and emits more climate pollution than the United States and Europe combined, its pivot to cleaner alternatives is happening at breakneck speed. Not only does China already dominate global manufacturing of solar panels, wind turbines, batteries, E.V.s and many other clean energy industries, but with each passing month, it is widening its technological lead.

Read the full story here

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Inside a Last-Ditch Battle to Save (or Kill) Clean-Energy Tax Credits

Supporters of tax breaks for wind and solar are fighting to retain them in the G.O.P. tax bill. They’re facing a conservative effort to kill them entirely.

Three wind turbines stand against a gray sky above cropland. — *An initial draft of the bill would phase out tax credits for wind and solar power and electric vehicles starting next year. Credit…George Etheredge for The New York Times*

By Lisa Friedman, Maxine Joselow, and Brad Plumer, The New York Times

As Senate Republicans scramble to pass President Trump’s far-reaching domestic policy bill, climate activists and energy companies are lobbying to salvage tax credits for wind, solar, and other climate-friendly technologies.

But they are running into formidable obstacles. Conservative activists, fossil-fuel lobbyists, and Mr. Trump are demanding that lawmakers enact even deeper cuts to clean-energy subsidies, or even scrap them entirely.

At stake are hundreds of billions of dollars’ worth of tax incentives put in place by the Biden administration, the vast majority of which are flowing to Republican congressional districts.

Some are aimed at encouraging Americans to buy electric vehicles or put solar panels on their roofs. Others are intended to spur manufacturing of wind turbines, solar-panel components, and other technologies that would help reduce planet-warming greenhouse gases. All the tax credits were greatly expanded as part of the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022, the Biden administration’s signature climate law.

“What is being proposed now will hurt businesses, and it will risk significant job loss,” said Lisa Jacobson, president of the Business Council for Sustainable Energy, a trade group. Her organization was one of several on Capitol Hill this week mounting a last-ditch effort to remind lawmakers of the jobs the law had created and what states stood to lose.

Read the full story here

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China surpasses 2030 renewables target six years early

By Tom Chivers, Semafor

China broke its own records for renewable energy installation in 2024, boosting solar capacity by 45.2% after an already breakneck 2023. Wind capacity leaped by 18%, also a record.

It means Beijing surpassed its 2030 renewables target six years early.

China emits the most carbon of any country, but scientists believe its emissions may have peaked, and its renewable energy production is expected to outstrip coal within five years.

While the US has also been rolling out large amounts of renewables, the industry “is facing headwinds” from President Donald Trump’s administration, The Associated Press reported: One analyst said China, the world’s biggest supplier of batteries, solar panels, and wind turbines, is “poised to lead the world in the energy transition.”

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