Clean energy won't be stopped
A message from Canary Media's executive director:
Despite the current chaos in Washington, D.C., the transition to a clean energy future won't be stopped. It's now being led from the ground up, by local and state elected officials, impassioned advocates, creative entrepreneurs, union craftspeople, dedicated citizens — and you.
At Canary Media, we're committed to independent reporting on state and local clean energy progress in addition to national developments. And we're now better equipped than ever to cover state and local news thanks to our merger in February with the Energy News Network.
If you appreciate the trusted journalism that our team provides, can you to help us keep going? Canary Media is celebrating its 4th birthday this month — another great reason to .
The Canary Media team put a spotlight on the power of community-level clean energy action at our Canary Live Chicago event last month. Our speakers included Chicago's chief sustainability officer, the founder of the nonprofit Blacks in Green, and other impressive local leaders. The audience brought together members of a carpenters' union, solar developers, community-focused investors, government officials, students, and clean energy fans of all stripes.
U.S. Rep. Sean Casten, a longtime clean energy advocate, was the final speaker at our event. He galvanized the crowd and dropped some wisdom, at one point quoting Chuck Neblett, a civil rights activist and one of the Freedom Singers: 'There has never been a time in history when we have needed to create social change that the movement didn't come first.'
Citizens can't wait for leaders to emerge, because we are the leaders — all of us. Canary Media is glad to be part of this joyful struggle with you.
Canary Media is a nonprofit news organization, a role that's more important now than ever, and we rely on support from our readers. And remember: Donations are tax-deductible in the U.S.
Thank you for your support — and for being a Canary Media reader.
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Yahoo
30-05-2025
- Yahoo
Electrifying this affordable housing complex made financial sense
Canary Media's 'Electrified Life' column shares real-world tales, tips, and insights to demystify what individuals and building owners can do to shift to clean electric power. An affordable housing complex for older adults in Sacramento, California, boasts some enticing features. Residents of the earth-toned, low-rise structures can cultivate gardens, swim laps in the pool, and toss bocce balls. They can stroll to visit neighbors. And now, after an electric transformation of the buildings, Foothill Farms residents can also enjoy the cleaner air that comes with ditching gas appliances. The project not only slashes the complex's health-harming and planet-warming pollution — it also made financial sense for both the owner BRIDGE Housing and its tenants. Two years ago, the 138-unit property's original gas-fired equipment was nearing the end of its life. Coupled with available financial support, the timing gave executives of BRIDGE, a nonprofit affordable housing developer and manager, a chance to pivot away from fossil fuels. The 'smart, opportunistic' project at Foothill Farms illustrates how properties can electrify while keeping costs low for residents, according to a case study written earlier this year by staff at the Stewards of Affordable Housing for the Future, a collaborative of 13 nonprofits, including BRIDGE. The retrofit is also a trailblazer for the decarbonization journey millions more units of government-supported affordable housing will eventually need to take. Although single-family housing is by far the most prevalent in the U.S., and the biggest source of carbon pollution from homes, cutting fossil fuels from multifamily affordable housing is a particularly tricky task. Some of the most vulnerable Americans live in subsidized apartments, including low-income households with older adults, disabled individuals, young families, and veterans — and they usually rent these units. Residents typically lack the power or cash to electrify properties, which presents a hurdle to eradicating emissions from buildings and denies inhabitants the upsides of these retrofits: greater comfort, safer air, and potential bill savings. 'There's an opportunity for delivering outsized benefits to [these] residents and communities,' said Lucas Toffoli, principal of the carbon-free buildings division at clean-energy think tank RMI. In 2023, BRIDGE Housing decided Foothill Farms would be a good candidate for energy-efficiency upgrades after Bright Power, an energy services provider, and Carbon Zero Buildings, a company specializing in decarbonization retrofits, analyzed BRIDGE's entire portfolio of properties. Carbon Zero carried out the electrifying changes: The turnkey contractor swapped out polluting gas-fueled water heaters for Rheem heat-pump water heaters and replaced ACs with Samsung heat pumps capable of both warming and cooling spaces. The firm also installed LED lighting everywhere, which consumes a tenth of the energy of incandescent light bulbs. Carbon Zero's team first piloted the complete retrofit in one unit to work out the kinks. With feedback from staff and residents, the crew honed its approach so that it could complete a unit's upgrades in a single day during business hours. 'I love that,' said Toffoli, who wasn't involved in the project. 'Displacing folks is not only expensive and burdensome ... it's a real disruption to people who may be juggling a lot of things, like work and family, or who have limited mobility or health problems.' In the common areas, Carbon Zero installed a new heat-pump pool heater and heat-pump spa heater, 30 EV charging stations, and 240-volt power outlets in the laundry rooms. Foothill Farms still has gas-powered clothes dryers, but BRIDGE plans to replace them with electric dryers when they conk out. Comparing 2023 average monthly energy usage data to 10 months of data after the in-unit retrofits were completed last spring, natural-gas use has decreased by 98% while electricity use has risen 24% across the whole property, thanks in large part to the almost-magical efficiency of heat pumps. Virtually all of the project's $2.6 million cost was covered by state and utility grants: California's Low-Income Weatherization Program, TECH Clean California, and the Sacramento Municipal Utility District. Other projects, though, are by no means guaranteed to see so much aid, with funding limited and awards variable, said Sebastian Cohn, senior project manager at the nonprofit Association for Energy Affordability and BRIDGE's primary contact for the weatherization program incentive. 'It is typically in a property's best interest to enroll [in these incentive programs] sooner than later,' Cohn told Canary Media. 'The same project reserved today would receive less than half the [Sacramento Municipal Utility District] incentives Foothill Farms did due to updated incentive levels and per-project limits.' Unlike many landlords who don't pay tenants' utility bills, and thus don't benefit from energy-efficiency upgrades, BRIDGE actually had a financial incentive to make this switch to electric appliances: The organization pays for residents' gas usage but not their electricity bills. How then did the project prevent residents' costs from going up? Elementary, my dear reader. Federal rules for most subsidized affordable housing protect residents from high rent and utility costs — and make sure these expenses don't exceed 30% of their income — by requiring owners to provide what are called utility allowances, i.e., rent reductions to tenants paying their own utilities. The exact amounts are set by housing authorities and depend on locale, home size, and types of appliances. Based on the utility allowances for Sacramento when Carbon Zero pitched the project, the contractor estimated that residents would come out ahead, with each unit on average saving over $200 annually. The estimated savings for BRIDGE itself were $25,000 per year. The real-world results match the initial project modeling very well, Cohn said, though BRIDGE declined to share specific dollar savings. BRIDGE isn't planning to stop with this project; a spokesperson said it's already working with Carbon Zero and Bright Power on similar retrofits at a few other California properties.
Yahoo
16-05-2025
- Yahoo
‘Nobody's seen it': An elusive report could drive Empire Wind to collapse
A massive New York offshore wind project may soon be abandoned mid-construction due to a mysterious report that few people in Washington appear to have seen except Interior Secretary Doug Burgum, one Fox News reporter, and the scientists who apparently wrote it. 'Scientists at [the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration] have revealed that the Biden administration's rushed approval of the Empire Wind project was built on bad & flawed science,' Interior Secretary Doug Burgum posted to X on April 21, five days after he issued a stop-work order that halted the Empire Wind 1 project and shocked the industry. His social media posts implied that findings from federal scientists at NOAA were the basis for the extreme measure. Construction can't restart until the Interior Department performs 'further reviews,' he wrote. Those apparently damning NOAA findings, however, have not been made public. Burgum's office did not respond to Canary Media's requests to share them. Nor have they been shared with Equinor, the project developer. As of May 14, U.S. Sen. Chuck Schumer, a Democrat from New York, hadn't seen them either, despite repeated requests. Even key members of Burgum's own staff in the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management's renewable energy office have not seen it, Canary Media has learned. 'Nobody's seen this report,' said a career employee at the Interior Department who Canary Media granted anonymity to speak freely for fear of retribution. 'My personal opinion is that it's all bullshit.' The lack of clarity raises questions about the basis of the Interior Department's initial decision, and what, exactly, its ongoing review is looking at. Desperate for an answer, Equinor has resorted to filing a Freedom of Information Act request for the report. That route could take months or years to deliver — time the project simply can't afford. The delays have created an 'urgent, unsustainable situation,' according to one Empire Wind executive, who told the Associated Press last week that the company was days away from giving up on the renewable energy project. The costs of idle boats and grounded workers are just too high, she said, bleeding the company of $50 million each week. Empire Wind 1 comprises a 73-acre onshore terminal and 54 turbines that were being built roughly 20 miles from New York City. The project's onshore work is halfway completed, and at-sea construction started in early April. It took eight years to get to that point, including over four years in the federal permitting process, from 2020 to 2024, despite Burgum's claim that its approval was rushed. The project is crucial to New York state's grid decarbonization goals, which rest heavily on offshore wind power. About two weeks into at-sea construction, on April 16, Burgum sent a letter to BOEM, a branch of the Interior, that halted the at-sea work. In Burgum's statement about the NOAA scientists' findings, posted on X days later, he linked to a Fox News article that summarizes the contents of a 'study' from NOAA, a sub-agency of the Commerce Department that works closely with BOEM to ensure offshore wind and other ocean energy developments do not run afoul of U.S. laws. The Fox News journalist appears to be the first and only reporter to access the study's contents. Industry groups fear Burgum's order sets a dangerous precedent for vaporizing energy projects mid-construction on the premise of politics. 'Stopping work on the fully federally permitted Empire Wind 1 offshore project should send chills across all industries investing in and holding contracts with the United States government,' said Liz Burdock, president and CEO of Oceantic Network, an offshore wind industry group. Documents obtained by Canary Media indicate that staffers in BOEM's Office of Renewable Energy Programs (OREP) have been denied access to the report. OREP is the government's 'hub' for offshore wind permitting and federal coordination, said the Interior employee who spoke with Canary Media. Its staff are in constant contact with offshore wind developers, the person added, from the time of lease purchase to the point where 'steel goes in the water.' It's not uncommon, they explained, for a developer and their assigned OREP point-of-contact to meet a few times each month. The Interior employee said that personnel within OREP, including top-level figures, were not alerted of Burgum's order until the day the news broke: 'There was no BOEM press release … nothing internal went out.' When it comes to the Empire Wind block, Burgum appears to be keeping BOEM in the dark. The Interior staffer said that, to their knowledge, no one at OREP has been explicitly asked to help with the ongoing review of Empire Wind's approval that Burgum announced in April. But a few days after the news broke, OREP was tapped to put together a spreadsheet that summarized 'concerns' about Empire Wind, according to the Interior staffer. The summary was prepared by OREP staff and sent to one of the office's supervisors within the last week, according to emails shared with Canary Media. The spreadsheet listed all concerns raised by the public and other federal agencies during the eight years Empire Wind went from lease sale to full approval. For each concern raised about Empire Wind, OREP staff were instructed in an email seen by Canary Media to succinctly summarize 'BOEM's response, the extent to which the issue was fully addressed, BOEM's view of whether the concern is mitigated, and whether there is new information that has been identified since [construction and operations] approval that would change the finding or outcome.' The spreadsheet includes hundreds of concerns — whether they are valid or not — that the public submitted in response to the Empire Wind's environmental impact assessment. OREP staff were instructed to capture as many of them as possible in this 'summary.' The Interior staffer said the whole exercise smacked of a fishing expedition — 'saying there is a problem and then they have to go searching for a problem.' Equinor, the wind farm's developer, has also been in the dark. 'The federal stop-work order from the Department of the Interior did not include information about the alleged deficiencies in the approval,' a spokesperson for Equinor told Canary Media. Equinor has since submitted 'repeated requests' to Burgum's office for the NOAA report, according to the spokesperson, in addition to filing the FOIA request. The Norwegian energy giant has already invested $2.7 billion into building the project's onshore and offshore infrastructure. It's anxious to know if it can still get a return on its investment — and turbines in the sea — but information has been hard to come by. 'While there have been some meetings, that does not include Department of Interior Secretary Doug Burgum,' Equinor's spokesperson told Canary Media. Last week, an Equinor executive met with a top White House official, Bloomberg reported, but the meeting appeared to yield little beyond another dire warning. 'If no progress is made within days, Equinor will be forced to terminate the project,' Molly Morris, president of Equinor Renewables Americas, told Bloomberg on Monday. 'We are still fighting every day to find a resolution.' Equinor is a familiar face in Washington. It has particularly long-standing relationships with conservatives, as the company has invested over $60 billion in the U.S. since the early 2000s, mostly in oil and gas. The company spokesperson said that 'Equinor has over 100 oil and gas leases in the Gulf of America,' referencing the new name President Donald Trump bestowed on the Gulf of Mexico earlier this year. Now, it's Democrats who are backing Equinor and joining its call for Burgum to hand over the NOAA report. In an impassioned speech, Sen. Schumer of New York compared the halt of Empire Wind to a 'dictatorship' where whim reigns and due process dies. 'I call on [Commerce] Secretary Lutnick to immediately release the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration report that was used as justification to halt work on the Empire Wind project. New Yorkers, Americans, the company, which invests heavily in America, deserve to know. Why halt this project? What's the deal?' said Schumer on the U.S. Senate floor on Wednesday. The senator also spelled out the incredible stakes should Equinor walk away. Empire Wind is being developed under contract with the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority (NYSERDA). According to Equinor, it will create roughly 2,500 new jobs in the New York area over the lifetime of the project. Roughly 1,000 of those employees are already at work. Empire Wind 1 is also a critical component of New York's strategy to address climate change and get 70% of its electricity from renewable sources by 2030. It's the largest energy infrastructure project the state has undertaken in the last 50 years, according to NYSERDA President Doreen Harris, who in an April 17 statement lambasted the Trump administration's stop-work order for doing 'irrefutable harm.' It's also important for helping New York City meet its humongous and growing electricity needs. Empire Wind 1 is one of the only 'new capacity sources' slated to come online in the near term for New York City and Long Island, according to a report released Monday by Aurora Energy Research. Should the project be canceled, alternatives are scarce: It can take up to eight years to build a new fossil-gas turbine, the report found, and more speculative energy sources like small modular nuclear reactors lack necessary federal approvals to fill in the gap. That makes Empire Wind 1, and offshore wind in general, key to the city being able to provide reliable and affordable energy to its millions of residents. In late April, during its first-quarter earnings call, Equinor's CEO floated that the company was considering legal action against the U.S. government over its stop-work order. It's the last lever the company has to pull to preserve the project. An Equinor spokesperson told Canary Media on Friday that the company's stance on weighing legal options has not changed. Schumer has heavily encouraged the firm to sue. 'We think it's illegal. And in fact, I have a call today into the head of [Equinor] to tell him to go to court, you'll win the case,' Schumer told reporters in early May. 'Our lawyers we've consulted think they have no basis to suspend it.' The Interior employee shared Schumer's sentiment. 'My personal hope is that Equinor does sue. Because I think what they would find during discovery is that we have no new information,' the employee said. 'There's nothing that was not already considered during the [permit] process that would warrant this change in decision.'
E&E News
16-05-2025
- E&E News
House Democrats slam banks over climate commitments
Dozens of House Democrats hammered a group of financial institutions Thursday for shifting their climate commitments since President Donald Trump took office. Forty-one lawmakers cited their concerns in a letter to 12 financial behemoths, including Morgan Stanley, Citigroup, JPMorgan Chase and Goldman Sachs. The Democrats slammed the groups for withdrawing from coalitions committed to emissions reductions, such as the Net Zero Banking Alliance and the Net Zero Asset Managers Initiative. Advertisement The letter was led by Reps. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.) and Sean Casten (D-Ill.), the ranking and vice ranking member of the House Financial Services Committee. They accused the banks of caving to pressure from the Trump administration and congressional Republicans.
