Clean energy's new playbook
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STEPHEN LACEY | The climate-centric era for clean energy already feels like a distant memory. We are in the middle of a stark recalibration, as political and economic pressures strain the electricity system. Being “green” is out; problem-solving is in.
This week, I held a live Frontier Forum with Heather O’Neill, CEO of Advanced Energy United, about where the industry should focus its attention in the wake of the GOP’s “One Big Beautiful Bill” and the Trump administration’s barrage of stop-work orders, onerous regulations, and funding cancellations. The answer: get more local and more practical.
States have always been the critical drivers of policy. But the picture has changed dramatically in the last couple of years. Governors and regulators are no longer leading with decarbonization. Instead, they want pragmatic answers to electricity affordability, reliability, and load growth.
Also this week, my Open Circuit co-host Katherine Hamilton launched a new business coalition called Common Charge, focused on expanding distributed energy assets to address those needs. It’s an example of the shift O’Neill described: Policymakers and advocates are centering their efforts on practical, near-term fixes that people can feel at the kitchen table.
Meanwhile, in reporter Maeve Allsup’s story on the offshore wind stop-work orders, we saw what that looks like in practice. As the administration's anti-wind efforts have intensified, offshore wind has pivoted from quiet lobbying to loud state engagement — and their response hasn’t been about climate goals.
New England governors demanded that Ørsted’s $4 billion Revolution Wind project be allowed to move forward, warning that cancellations would cost jobs and threaten grid reliability. Rhode Island’s attorney general went further, suing the federal government.
The lesson for solar and other sectors is clear: We need a more forceful campaign around affordability, resilience, and economic growth.
I co-hosted another conversation on Open Circuit this week that provided a backdrop to these themes. Dr. Sarah Kapnick, the global head of JPMorgan’s climate advisory, gave an overview of the trillion-dollar climate risks facing investors and large companies — and detailed how adaptation can become a corporate growth story, not just a defensive posture.
Taken together, these stories illustrate a clear shift; clean energy has moved beyond the decarbonization narrative. The industry’s next wave of growth will be defined by how well it delivers on the fundamentals: resilience, reliability, affordability, and economic competitiveness. That’s the new playbook. Listen to Dr. Sarah Kapnick delve into how to price climate risk into financial markets in this week’s episode of Open Circuit. Elsewhere on the site this week: what the solar industry can learn from Ørsted’s fight over Revolution Wind, the spike in solar imports to Africa, and the escalation of residential solar layoffs.
THE ROUNDUP
Can changing the industry's approach to manufacturing keep transmission costs down?
Ayr Energy is bringing manufacturing principles from the automotive industry to one of the biggest bottlenecks facing U.S. energy growth today: a massive shortage of power grid equipment.
The California-based Ayr, which emerged from stealth this week with backing from General Catalyst, is seeking to upend the U.S. market for grid equipment — and bring lead times down to one year, from three to five years today — by reimagining every element of the supply chain, from contracting and design to manufacturing.
The company’s supply chain circumvents China entirely, and skips the up to six-year wait times for most new factories to reach nameplate capacity, by leveraging excess capacity at established factories in India. Those factories are already manufacturing power grid equipment for their domestic markets as well as for Southeast Asian markets, Ayr co-founder and CEO Anirudh Reddy told Latitude Media. But crucially, those Indian manufacturers invested well ahead of local demand, meaning they have available production capacity that Ayr was able to tap into immediately.
Ayr is also standardizing certain components with particularly long lead times, a move that forces developers to decrease the level of customization in their orders. That approach, the company asserts, is already cutting lead times for critical equipment in half.
(Continue reading Maeve Allsup’s piece, “Meet the grid equipment startup borrowing from the automaker playbook”...)
But what’s behind the grid equipment shortage in the first place? Well, as Maeve writes this week, the supply chain for equipment like transformers, circuit breakers, and switch gears has long been concentrated among a handful of multinational incumbents — including General Electric, Siemens, Schneider Electric, Hitachi Energy — and relies heavily on China for component manufacturing.
It’s a mature sector manufacturing complex products, which are traditionally custom-built for individual buyers. And it comes with high up-front costs.
However, as host Shayle Kann explored in one of our most popular episodes of the Catalyst podcast ever, the sector appears to be caught off-guard by the surge in demand for grid equipment, spurred by electrification, the artificial intelligence boom, and the simple reality of aging infrastructure.
Shayle interviewed Tim Mills, CEO at transformer manufacturer ERMCO, about how rising demand for transformers has pushed manufacturers to the limit — and why it’s been so hard for manufacturers to expand their capacity. One of the most immediate consequences: higher prices, which are being passed along to the ratepayer right at a moment when electricity bills are already high.
(Continue reading or listening to the 2024 Catalyst episode, “Understanding the electric transformer shortage”...)
The escalating Trump toll on solar
The first months of the Trump administration were characterized in part by lost jobs, particularly among federal workers — nearly 200,000 civil servants have left the workforce since January — and the organizations that rely on federal funding.
But nearly eight months in, the wider industry consequences are becoming clear. The residential solar industry has relied for nearly two decades on the 25D tax credit, but due to the GOP’s One Big Beautiful Bill passed in July, it will now abruptly sunset at the end of this year. And in part as a result, companies are beginning to lay off workers — and even close their doors entirely.
The most significant example is residential solar installer PosiGen, which announced last week that it has to cease “most of its operations” throughout the U.S. due to financial difficulties. The initial layoffs include 78 workers in Connecticut and 166 workers in Louisiana, though the company warned that it expects to shut down all operations and terminate all remaining employees between Aug. 31 and Sept. 13 if it does not obtain sufficient financing.
Meanwhile, the market downturn is also impacting organizations that serve the solar industry. Last week, the California-based solar advocacy nonprofit Vote Solar laid off 20% of its staff, or 11 people, a decision that CEO Sachu Constantine said on LinkedIn came “in response to the rapidly evolving political and funding landscape.”
(Continue reading Lisa Martine Jenkins’ piece, “The Trump solar layoffs are escalating”...)
MORE STORIES + PODCASTS
LISA MARTINE JENKINS | Facing liquidity problems, sodium-ion startup Natron Energy closes its doors
BIANCA GIACOBONE | In Africa, the first signs of solar adoption at scale
OPEN CIRCUIT | JPMorgan’s climate scientist thinks differently about risk
LISA MARTINE JENKINS | The Trump solar layoffs are escalating
LATITUDE STUDIOS | Sponsored: Restarts and uprates are powering the nuclear renaissance
LISA MARTINE JENKINS | Commonwealth Fusion Systems tops up its Series B with $863 million
IN OTHER NEWS
The Associated Press | A federal appeals court backed the Trump EPA’s effort to eliminate billions in Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund, or “green bank,” funds.
NPR | “A group of more than 85 scientists have issued a joint rebuttal to a recent U.S. Department of Energy report about climate change, finding it full of errors and misrepresenting climate science.”
Bloomberg | Over a dozen venture capital firms have formed a new coalition to back climate tech.
Solar Power World | The U.S. Court of International Trade ruled that a 2022 Biden executive order to pause tariffs on solar imports from four countries in Southeast Asia was illegal, and is imposing retroactive duties.
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