Canary Media

After the school year ends in the Massachusetts towns of Acton and Boxborough, the district’s electric buses will mostly stay put in a parking lot. But they won’t sit idle all summer. The three vehicles will charge up their nearly 200-kilowatt-hour batteries overnight, when the power supply is at its cleanest and…

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. Federal energy efficiency rebate programs will no longer cover a switch from fossil fuels to electricity for heating, according to…

New York and six other Democratic-led states are challenging the Trump administration’s controversial efforts to pay private energy firms to abandon their U.S. offshore wind projects. On Tuesday, the coalition of blue states sued the U.S. Department of the Interior over its March agreement with French oil giant…

As the U.S. looks to revive its stagnant nuclear industry, a group of companies is racing to realize the promise of a “meltdown-proof” fuel that for decades has struggled to progress beyond federal lab experiments. Tri-structural isotropic fuel, known as TRISO, is safer and more stable than the fuel rods used by the…

The Trump administration has spent the last year demanding that old, inefficient coal plants stay online long past their retirement dates. But one of those plants in Indiana hasn’t operated in months and won’t be able to until costly repairs are completed — undermining federal officials’ claims that their mandates…

The California Air Resources Board on Friday approved major changes to the state’s cap-and-invest program , including a controversial plan to allow polluting industries to earn free emissions allowances if they invest in decarbonizing their facilities — a move critics say could undermine California’s decarbonization…

Is Frito-Lay categorically refusing to buy potatoes grown on farmland that has hosted solar installations? No, the company says. That hasn't stopped lawmakers in Michigan and Pennsylvania from spreading the false claim about one of the biggest purchasers of potatoes in the country. In January, Michigan Republican…

When Steve Ault got an offer about six years ago to lease a bit of his 100-acre family farm in Prince Edward County, Virginia, for solar panels, he let the letter sit on the kitchen table for a few days. Then he showed it to his wife, Chris. “Well, shoot,” she recalled telling her husband. “Let’s give them a call…

This analysis and news roundup come from the Canary Media Weekly newsletter. Sign up to get it every Friday. The 2026 election season is officially upon us, and with electricity prices on the rise, energy affordability is sure to factor into thousands of campaigns currently underway across the country. While…

This article is part of our ​“Chart of the Week” series . Once upon a time, Americans could get big federal tax incentives for buying electric vehicles, heat pumps, rooftop solar, and home batteries. But the Trump administration scrapped those tax breaks last year — and no category of household cleantech has…

Menards is a Midwest staple: The Wisconsin-based chain, known for its “Save BIG Money” slogan, is the nation’s third-largest home-improvement retail brand, behind Home Depot and Lowe’s. But in Illinois, it’s slowly becoming more than just a place for folks to pick up ceiling hooks and gardening gloves, as developers…

When a neighborhood-scale geothermal network came online in Framingham, Massachusetts, two years ago, it was hailed as groundbreaking. The first-of-its-kind system, owned by the state’s largest utility, Eversource, delivers warm and cool air to some 140 customers through pipes much like the ones that used to carry…

A giant energy-storage project in South Dakota will soon turn cheap wind energy into clean industrial steam for a neighboring biofuels facility. The startup Antora Energy said it recently began booting up a 5-gigawatt-hour thermal energy storage system at Poet ’s ethanol-production plant near Big Stone City, close…

Canary Media’s ​“ Electrified Life ” column shares real-world tales, tips, and insights to demystify what individuals can do to shift their homes and lives to clean electric power. A year ago, Crystal Bright was freaking out. The Charlotte, North Carolina–based interior designer had just separated from her…

Seven years ago, New York passed what leaders touted as one of the nation’s most ambitious climate laws. Now, the state has kneecapped it ahead of a crucial end-of-decade deadline. On Tuesday, the Democratic-controlled legislature approved a budget bill that effectively vaporizes a 2030 mandate to slash…

It’s set to be an abnormally hot summer this year — but the U.S. grid appears to be in decent shape to handle the heat. The credit goes to a boatload of new solar and storage and a handful of new gas plants. That’s the upshot of the new summer reliability assessment from the North American Electric Reliability…

Forrest Bagley was eager to dive into Illinois’ community solar market. The solar company he owns with his father and brother had successfully developed arrays in Maine, Massachusetts, and New York, and generous state incentives for community solar plus ample open land made Illinois seem an ideal new frontier. Now,…

This story was originally published by Colorado Public Radio . Sign up for CPR’s weekly climate newsletter. DENVER — Like in many American cities, Denver's largest source of climate pollution is its buildings. Powering, heating, and cooling the city's skyscrapers takes a lot of fossil fuels. Now, the city is…

See more from Canary Media’s “Chart of the week” column . April 2026: Remember the date for the energy-transition history books. It’s the first month when wind and solar combined to produce more electricity than natural gas did, per new global data from energy think tank Ember . Just five years ago, the gap…

This analysis and news roundup come from the Canary Media Weekly newsletter. Sign up to get it every Friday. Two utility companies are headed for a megamerger — with dubious benefits to residential customers and clean energy. This week, Florida utility giant NextEra Energy — the country’s top renewable energy…