Canary Media

With utility bills rising fast , an increasing number of states are looking to virtual power plants as a potential solution. As of last year, 34 states have programs that call on utilities to use smart thermostats and water heaters, batteries and EV chargers, and energy management systems at businesses and factories…

This article originally appeared on Inside Climate News , a nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization that covers climate, energy, and the environment. Sign up for their newsletter here . In the 2021 Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, Congress voted to invest $5 billion in accelerating a phaseout of diesel school…

Form Energy invented a novel iron-air battery to store clean energy for much longer timeframes than conventional lithium-ion batteries can. The startup is still constructing its first commercial project, in Minnesota, but today revealed it has clinched a potentially game-changing follow-up in the same state to…

At the start of this year, the European Union officially launched the world’s first tariff on the carbon footprints of imports. It’s already looking to carve out a loophole. The EU’s carbon border adjustment mechanism, or CBAM, requires importers to pay a fee based on the carbon dioxide emissions of the goods they…

Sitting below sea level along the hurricane-prone Gulf of Mexico, New Orleans is particularly vulnerable to losing power during extreme weather. But the city plans to tackle that problem by helping residents buy backup batteries, which will make the grid more resilient. In December, the New Orleans City Council…

Green-steel startup Boston Metal has suffered a major setback following an industrial accident at its facility in Brazil. The Massachusetts-based company announced it will lay off 71 people in the U.S. after the incident at its Brazilian plant last month thwarted a key funding deal, Boston Business Journal first…

Carole and Alan Balzer have called the town of Talent home since 1998. They met in college in nearby Ashland and never left southwestern Oregon. They love the small-town life and the bucolic setting of orchards, vineyards, and ranches. On the morning of Sept. 8, 2020, Carole was at work a few towns away when she…

The U.S. desperately needs to make more room on its electricity grid. But for years, the country has struggled to build new power lines at a reasonable pace, and despite fast-rising electricity demand, there’s no sign of that changing in the near term. A project taking shape near Boston could help make the case for…

This analysis and news roundup come from the Canary Media Weekly newsletter. Sign up to get it every Friday. President Donald Trump has all but dismantled U.S. efforts to curb pollution that’s warming the planet and harming human health. Yet with every federal blow to climate action, states have launched a…

See more from Canary Media’s “Chart of the Week” column . It’s official: Grid batteries broke another record. More than 13 gigawatts of energy storage was installed across the U.S. last year, per a new report from the Business Council for Sustainable Energy and BloombergNEF. That’s up from the roughly 12 GW…

Five years ago, Winter Storm Uri brought the Texas power grid to its knees. Temperatures plunged across the state for nearly a week, power plants froze, natural gas supply lines failed, and the grid operator came within minutes of a total system collapse. More than 4 million Texans lost electricity, many for days.…

This story was originally published by Grist . Sign up for Grist’s weekly newsletter . It’s no secret that U.S. electricity prices have been rising over the last few years: The average residential energy bill in 2025 was roughly 30 percent higher than in 2021. This jump is largely in line with the overall…

Before temperatures plunged to the teens in the wee hours of Feb. 2 in North Carolina, Duke Energy pleaded with customers like me to conserve. Since electricity supplies would be strained, the utility said in a blanket email, we could help avoid planned blackouts by lowering our thermostats and perhaps putting on a…

Heat pumps can save households money on their utility bills and are essential to cutting carbon emissions. The catch? The superefficient appliance can cost thousands of dollars more than a new gas furnace. Zero Homes aims to change that. The startup just raised $16.8 million to make it cheaper and easier for…

Since the late 1800s , the grid has used more or less the same devices to convert electricity to different voltages. They’re called transformers — and they’re in increasingly short supply as power demand surges nationwide. A crop of startups wants to solve that problem and modernize transformer technology at the…

This story was originally published in the Daily Yonder. For more rural reporting and small-town stories, visit dailyyonder.com . When Chad Raines took over his family’s Texas cotton farm in 2008, he thought the going would be easy. That’s because their first year was relatively profitable — but the success was…

A massive new battery has entered service in southern Maine, providing a much-needed boost to the Northeast’s efforts to expand clean and affordable energy. Developer Plus Power wrapped up its Cross Town Energy Storage project in late November, but publicly inaugurated it last week in a ceremony featuring Gov. Janet…

Back in the summer of 2024, Minnesota utility Xcel Energy proposed a novel approach to building virtual power plants , the networks of rooftop solar systems, home batteries, and other energy equipment that can operate in tandem to reduce strain on the electric grid. Instead of working with other companies to cobble…

President Donald Trump has made it quite clear how he feels about state laws that aim to make fossil fuel companies pay for damages caused by climate change. An executive order issued in April compared these efforts — known as climate superfund laws — to extortion. The administration has since sued New York and…

This story is from Floodlight, a nonprofit newsroom that investigates the powerful interests stalling climate action. Sign up for Floodlight's newsletter here . From her home in Donaldsonville, Louisiana, less than 3 miles from the world’s largest ammonia plant, Ashley Gaignard says the air itself carries a…