Counterspark

ERCOT broke its all-time record for power demand twice in two days, setting a new record high in Texas on Wednesday and pushing the grid to the limit. That means we need new power now and Texas does not have the luxury of leaving new power stuck in limbo waiting around for permits. San Antonio’s publicly owned electric utility is seeking new batteries and a microgrid that can disconnect from the larger grid and keep critical infrastructure on the city’s East and South sides powered through prolonged outages and extreme weather like what we’ve seen recently. It is part of a wider effort to prepare for rapidly rising electricity demand. The utility is considering requests from roughly 50 prospective industrial and commercial projects that could eventually quadruple the amount of power it needs. San Antonio already receives enough electricity from wind to power more than 280,000 homes, and the utility has sought another 400 megawatts of wind power to power around another 100,000. Yet FIFTY-FOUR proposed wind projects across Texas are waiting on routine Department of Defense reviews. Federal law calls for those reviews to be completed within 60 days. The department has not approved a wind project since August 2025 and canceled pending meetings with developers in April. Those delays are disrupting financing, permits, turbine orders, construction schedules, and local contracting, while making it harder to add the power Texas needs to keep the grid reliable and consumer costs down. Texas is demonstrating how wind, batteries, and microgrids can strengthen reliability while creating room for economic growth. There is no need to turn a routine review into an indefinite freeze on the new power Texas needs.

Trump promised to bring factories back to America. But you can’t promise new factories and manufacturing jobs while pulling the rug out from under the projects that buy what those factories produce. A new analysis found that the 223 clean manufacturing, energy and industrial projects have been canceled or stalled since January 2025 represent nearly $83 BILLION in investment. Congress’s 2025 budget law also changed the rules for more than 3,000 additional factories, energy projects, and industrial sites that were already operating or in development. Together this shows nearly $700B invested and almost 1.2 million American jobs are at risk. A large energy project does more than hire workers at the construction site; it buys batteries, panels, steel structures, electrical equipment and other products from American factories across the country. It creates jobs for the long term. When fewer energy projects move forward, factories lose orders. Communities lose construction and manufacturing jobs. The grid loses power it needs while electricity demand and bills keep rising. America needs more affordable power and more things made here. Federal policy should help build both, not make both harder.

For the second time in two weeks, PJM, the electric grid operator serving 67 million people across the Mid-Atlantic and Midwest, is facing an extreme heat wave that exposes a recurring grid problem: a lack of affordable power ready to handle extreme demand without emergency measures. PJM has issued another Hot Weather Alert through July 17, along with maximum-generation and load-management alerts. The Department of Energy has also issued another emergency order through July 21, allowing PJM to call on additional fossil-fuel power plants and backup generators if electricity supplies get too tight. We saw this play out during the July 4 heat wave. PJM kept the lights on, but it took a costly scramble. They called on every available power plant, paid customers to reduce electricity use during the busiest hours, and received federal permission for some plants to operate beyond their normal pollution limits. Power prices surged as the system searched for every available source of electricity. Those emergency tools helped avoid outages. But when the grid repeatedly has to rely on last-minute generation and emergency orders during increasing summer heat, customers are left exposed to higher costs. PJM can reduce that risk by connecting more low-cost clean power, adding batteries to store it, more advanced transmission lines to move it, and expanding technology to efficiently distribute it through networks like Virtual Power Plants that use smart thermostats, home batteries, electric vehicles, and more. The region does not need another emergency response that raises bills, and it needs enough affordable power available before the next heat wave lands. #CleanEnergy #GridReliability

The Ute Mountain Ute Tribe spent 15 years building a way off the fossil fuel roller coaster. After decades of boom-and-bust oil and gas revenue, the tribe is moving forward with a major solar and battery storage project on tribal land in New Mexico. The tribe and its partners got federal permits locked in just before the Trump administration cutoff that makes the path for new wind and solar approvals much harder. The project includes 270 megawatts of solar and 180 megawatts of battery storage on tribal land in New Mexico. The solar side alone would equal nearly 8% of New Mexico’s average electricity use at full output, and the battery storage system can deliver 180 megawatts to help move power to the grid when it’s most needed. The location is key, too. The project sits near major power lines reaching Texas, Arizona, California, Colorado, and Utah, where grid demands are steadily increasing. For the tribe, solar is also a long-term economic decision. Their environment director told NPR that oil and gas revenue has meant decades of boom and bust, riding “that roller coaster including the scary crash.” Solar gives the tribe a steadier investment as the region calls for more electricity resources. The July 4 deadline for many wind and solar projects to start construction and keep the easier path to federal tax credits has already passed. Projects that started construction in time kept that path, while projects that missed the deadline may now have to be fully built, connected to the grid, and producing power by the end of 2027. For large energy projects, that is much harder. A project can spend years working through permits, financing, equipment orders, grid approvals, construction contracts, and power purchase agreements before it is ready to deliver electricity. A Solar Energy Industries Association analyst quoted by NPR warned that 36% of planned U.S. electricity capacity through 2030 is now at risk because of federal policy changes. The Ute Mountain Ute project shows what can happen when a clean energy project is far enough along to survive a sudden federal policy shift. The risk now is that other projects the grid is already counting on may be pushed into a timeline too tight to meet, leaving the country with less power, fewer construction jobs, and higher bills for customers as electricity demand grows.

July 4 brought major progress for advanced nuclear power, AND a costly deadline for wind and solar. The Energy Department celebrated progress toward a July 4 goal to bring at least three advanced reactors online. But wind and solar developers faced a much more consequential deadline on the same day: projects generally had to begin construction by July 4 to preserve the easier path to full federal tax credits. Any that did not meet that deadline now have to enter service by the end of 2027 to preserve the credits that many developers had counted on when planning their projects. The two policies moved clean energy development in opposite directions. The nuclear pilot created a faster pathway for testing new reactor designs, while President Trump’s 2025 tax law cut short the time wind and solar projects have to qualify for support that was previously expected to remain available through 2032. Two reactor startups have reached criticality, meaning they achieved a self-sustaining nuclear reaction. Oklo has also cleared a major safety review and expects its test reactor to reach criticality later in July. That progress is good news, and advanced nuclear could become an important part of America’s future electricity supply. Nuclear also doesn’t face the same tax-credit cutoff, with new projects able to qualify if they begin construction through 2033. Wind and solar developers spent the past year ordering equipment, committing funding, and beginning work early to preserve eligibility. Projects that missed the deadline could lose credits worth at least 30% of their costs, and analysts estimate that contract prices for new wind and solar power could rise by 40% to 50%. Solar Energy Industries Association estimates that 36% of all electricity capacity planned through 2030 is now at risk. This restriction threatens a major share of the new power the country was counting on while electricity demand is rising. Helping advanced nuclear move forward doesn’t require making wind and solar more expensive to build. Wind and solar can add electricity rapidly to a grid seriously in need of the extra support. The nuclear pilot shows what clear goals, coordinated reviews, and stable federal support can accomplish. Applying that urgency across clean energy would give states and utilities more options to meet growing needs while protecting reliability and customer bills. No need to leave resources that make our energy more reliable and affordable on the table because of politics.

The United States produces more oil than any country in the world. If producing more fossil fuels were enough to deliver energy independence, we’d have it by now. America has been chasing that promise since 1973, when President Nixon launched "Project Independence" as we faced a gas and oil embargo that had quadrupled prices. The goal was to meet all of America's energy needs without depending on foreign sources by 1980. More than 50 years later, we’ve reached record oil production. The United States produced an annual record of 13.6 million barrels per day in 2025 and remained the world’s largest crude oil producer, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration. And yet American consumers still feel it when Russia invades Ukraine, shipping routes are disrupted, or OPEC changes production. That’s because oil is priced in a global market. American oil doesn’t sit in a separate American-only market. It’s bought, sold, and priced alongside oil from the rest of the world, which means overseas disruptions can still shape what people pay here at home. More drilling can add supply, but it can’t fully insulate Americans from global price swings. That’s the part the old definition of energy independence keeps missing. Real energy independence means reducing how much globally priced fuel we need in the first place. That looks like: - Reducing fuel demand through efficiency and electrification - Diversifying energy sources beyond globally-traded commodities - Investing in clean power generation with no recurring fuel costs (solar, wind, storage) - Accelerating electric transportation to reduce oil dependence - Building resilient, domestic energy systems less exposed to global market volatility Clean energy doesn’t just cut pollution, it cuts exposure to fuel markets that no president, governor, utility, or oil company fully controls. We’ve spent 53 years testing the idea that fossil fuel abundance alone can deliver energy independence, and it hasn’t. The next 50 years should be about building an energy system that families, businesses, and communities can actually count on. The question for policymakers, industry leaders, and investors: have we seen enough to rethink what energy independence means for the next 50 years?

America turns 250, but much of our electric grid was built before electricity became as central to daily life and economic growth as it is today. Throughout U.S. history, we have thrived on innovation and updated major systems as the country’s needs changed, adding the infrastructure and technology required to support new industries, new forms of transportation, and new ways of living and working. The electric grid now faces that kind of pressure as electricity demand is growing again, while utilities and grid planners are trying to add enough power and transmission to keep pace. How that expansion is planned will shape both reliability and what customers pay. Preparing the system for what comes next requires more than building power plants. New projects need to connect faster. Transmission needs to move electricity where it’s needed. Batteries and flexible energy use can help cover high-demand hours, while efficiency and grid upgrades can get more from the infrastructure already in place. Many of these decisions are being made at the state level. Governors, lawmakers, and utility regulators influence what gets built, how quickly it comes online, and how the costs are divided among customers. America’s 250th anniversary is a useful moment to ask whether the power system is keeping up with the country it now serves. As the United States enters its next chapter, it needs a grid that can support more growth while keeping electricity reliable and affordable.

Virginia is getting a major climate program back! On July 1, Virginia officially rejoins the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, restoring a program that had already delivered hundreds of millions of dollars to households and communities across the Commonwealth. Virginia first joined RGGI in 2020 under the bipartisan Virginia Clean Economy Act, becoming the first Southern state to participate in a regional program that limits power plant pollution and invests the proceeds back into communities. RGGI works by requiring power companies to pay for each ton of carbon pollution they release, while the total amount allowed declines over time. That gives companies a financial reason to reduce pollution and shift toward cleaner energy, but the larger public benefit is what happens with the revenue. The results were impressive: $827.7 million raised through carbon auctions About $414 million directed to energy-efficiency upgrades for low-income households and affordable housing About $372 million directed to community flood-preparedness projects A 20% reduction in power plant pollution In Virginia, that money helped families make their homes more efficient, reduce energy use, and lower bills. It also helped communities prepare for flooding that is already becoming more frequent and more costly. Virginia walked away from those benefits when former Governor Glenn Youngkin withdrew the Commonwealth from the program. Now, with Virginia returning, that funding can begin flowing again. House Majority Leader Charniele Herring explained why the policy matters: “It’s actually going to decrease costs for energy in the long term for low-income consumers. There are benefits from the reduction of carbon emissions.”

Duke Energy wants North Carolina households to pay more. The company is for an average customer to pay 18% more over two years – roughly $34 more each month by 2028. Duke says it needs the money for a larger, more resilient electric system as North Carolina grows and adds new industrial energy users. The question isn’t whether the grid needs investment. It does. The question is whether customers are being asked to cover the right investments, at the right cost, with the right accountability. Here's what's raising questions: Duke Energy reported $4.9 billion in profit in 2025. Their Board of Directors flew 78,000+ miles on corporate jets for board meetings in one year — up from 20,000 miles in the last rate case. They purchased two new Gulfstream jets. Duke also wants to recover $72 million in COVID-era unpaid bills to earn even more. Meanwhile, residential customers are being asked to absorb an 18% increase while business customers face 11% and industrial customers face 13%. Nearly 200 people showed up at a public hearing in Durham to oppose the proposal. More than 4,000 written comments have been filed against it. NC Attorney General Jeff Jackson even submitted a 700-page opposition. When utilities plan for rising demand, regulators should ask: - Are cheaper clean resources being fully considered? - Are grid upgrades being targeted where they’re actually needed? - Are customers being protected from utility spending that drives profits without lowering costs? The NC Utilities Commission is expected to decide by August 2026. If they don't rule by September 20, 2026, the rate hike could be automatically approved. For anyone who's in North Carolina or following proposed pricing hikes like this one, what are your thoughts?

Juneteenth marks a defining moment in American freedom: the day the promise of emancipation finally reached enslaved people who had been denied it for far too long. It is also a reminder that freedom requires more than a declaration.  It requires the opportunity to build a healthy life, support a family, and share in the benefits of economic progress. That work is never finished. Today, access to affordable energy, reliable power, clean air, and economic opportunity is still uneven across communities. The decisions we make about our energy system help shape who benefits from investment, who breathes cleaner air, who sees lower utility bills, and who has access to the jobs being created by one of the largest economic transformations in generations. Clean energy can lower costs, strengthen reliability, improve public health, and create opportunity. Those benefits should not be reserved for the communities with the most wealth, the most influence, or the easiest access to capital. On Juneteenth, we honor the struggle for freedom and reflect on the responsibility to build an economy that works for everyone. We wish everyone a joyous Juneteenth celebration!