You’re out of free articles.
Log in
To continue reading, log in to your account.
Create a Free Account
To unlock more free articles, please create a free account.
Sign In or Create an Account.
By continuing, you agree to the Terms of Service and acknowledge our Privacy Policy
Welcome to Heatmap
Thank you for registering with Heatmap. Climate change is one of the greatest challenges of our lives, a force reshaping our economy, our politics, and our culture. We hope to be your trusted, friendly, and insightful guide to that transformation. Please enjoy your free articles. You can check your profile here .
subscribe to get Unlimited access
Offer for a Heatmap News Unlimited Access subscription; please note that your subscription will renew automatically unless you cancel prior to renewal. Cancellation takes effect at the end of your current billing period. We will let you know in advance of any price changes. Taxes may apply. Offer terms are subject to change.
Subscribe to get unlimited Access
Hey, you are out of free articles but you are only a few clicks away from full access. Subscribe below and take advantage of our introductory offer.
subscribe to get Unlimited access
Offer for a Heatmap News Unlimited Access subscription; please note that your subscription will renew automatically unless you cancel prior to renewal. Cancellation takes effect at the end of your current billing period. We will let you know in advance of any price changes. Taxes may apply. Offer terms are subject to change.
Create Your Account
Please Enter Your Password
Forgot your password?
Please enter the email address you use for your account so we can send you a link to reset your password:
The Solar For All program is the final piece of the $27 billion Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund.
The great promise of solar panels — in addition to their being carbon-free — is the democratization of energy. Anyone can produce their own power, typically for less than the going utility rate. The problem is that those who stand to benefit the most from this opportunity haven’t been able to access it.
That pattern could change, however, with Solar for All, a $7 billion program under the Environmental Protection Agency to support solar in low- to moderate-income communities. On Monday, the Biden administration announced it was awarding the funds to 60 state and local governments, tribes, and national and regional nonprofits, at an average grant size of more than $80 million.
The funding will be used to design new programs and bolster existing ones that subsidize the cost of rooftop solar installations, community solar projects and battery storage. During a press call on Friday, the administration said the awardees have committed to deliver at least 20% utility bill savings to the households they serve.
To get a sense of how transformative Solar for All could be, it’s helpful to look at the numbers. According to Department of Energy data, low- to moderate-income households spend an average of 6% of their income on energy, with some paying as much as 30%, whereas households at higher income levels spend an average of just 2%. As much as a quarter of the country reports having struggled to pay electric bills, sacrificing basic needs like food and medicine or keeping their homes at unsafe temperatures because of energy concerns.
The number of these households installing rooftop solar has been increasing steadily year over year, but in 2022, they still made up only about 22% of installations, though they represent about 43% of the population.
The disparity is largely due to the high up-front cost of a solar installation, plus the fact that lower-income Americans are less likely to own their homes. While there’s a federal tax incentive to bring down the cost, low-income households may not have the tax liability to take advantage of it. They also are more likely to live in older homes that require roof repairs, the cost of which are often not covered by incentive programs.
Solar for All represents a potential step change. In at least 25 of the states and territories awarded through the program, there are no pre-existing low-income solar programs. The EPA estimates that the funds will help more than 900,000 households see the benefits of solar. It will also increase resilience in low-income communities during power outages by giving more households access to backup batteries.
Biden and his cabinet are taking a victory lap this week in honor of Earth Day, with a national tour of events and announcements related to the president’s climate and environmental record. In addition to Solar For All, the administration also launched a new web portal for the American Climate Corps on Monday, which lists nearly 2,000 training and job opportunities in fields like solar installation and mangrove restoration.
With this $7 billion heading out the door this summer, Biden will soon have distributed the full $27 billion that Congress allocated to a program called the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund two years ago when it passed the Inflation Reduction Act. The initial $20 billion was awarded in early April to launch a national network of green banks that will provide low-cost loans and other affordable finance options for climate adaptation and mitigation initiatives.
Log in
To continue reading, log in to your account.
Create a Free Account
To unlock more free articles, please create a free account.
Core inflation is up, meaning that interest rates are unlikely to go down anytime soon.
The Fed on Wednesday issued a report showing substantial increases in the price of eggs, used cars, and auto insurance — data that could spell bad news for the renewables economy.
Though some of those factors had already been widely reported on, the overall rise in prices exceeded analysts’ expectations. With overall inflation still elevated — reaching an annual rate of 3%, while “core” inflation, stripping out food and energy, rose to 3.3%, after an unexpectedly sharp 0.4% jump in January alone — any prospect of substantial interest rate cuts from the Federal Reserve has dwindled even further.
Renewable energy development is especially sensitive to higher interest rates. That’s because renewables projects, like wind turbines and solar panels, have to incur the overwhelming majority of their lifetime costs before they start operating and generating revenue. Developers then often fund much of the project through borrowed money that’s secured against an agreement to buy the resulting power. When the cost of borrowing money goes up, projects become less viable, with lower prospective returns sometimes causing investors not to go forward .
High interest rates have plagued the renewables economy for years. “As interest rates rise, all of a sudden, solar assets that are effectively bonds become less valuable,” Quinn Pasloske, a managing director at Greenbacker, a renewable investor and operating company, told me on Tuesday, describing how the stream of payments from a solar project becomes less valuable as rates rise because investors can get more from risk-free government bonds.
The new inflation data is “consistent with our call of an extended Fed pause, with only one rate cut in 2025, happening in June,” Morgan Stanley economists wrote in a note to clients. Bond traders are also projecting just a single cut for the rest of the year — but not until December.
Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell told the Senate Banking committee Tuesday, “We think our policy rate is in a good place, and we don’t see any reason to be in a hurry to reduce it further.”
The yield for the 10-year Treasury bond, often used as a benchmark for the cost of credit, is up 0.09% today, to 4.63%. While this is below where yields peaked in mid-January, it’s a level still well above where yields have been for almost all of the last year. When Treasury yields rise, the cost of credit throughout the economy goes up.
Clean energy stocks were down this morning — but so is the overall market. Because while high interest rates are especially bad for renewables, they’re not exactly great for anyone else.
The Army Corps of Engineers, which oversees U.S. wetlands, halted processing on 168 pending wind and solar actions, a spokesperson confirmed to Heatmap.
UPDATE: On February 6, the Army Corp of Engineers announced in a one-sentence statement that it lifted its permitting hold on renewable energy projects. It did not say why it lifted the hold, nor did it explain why the holds were enacted in the first place. It’s unclear whether the hold has been actually lifted, as I heard from at least one developer who was told otherwise from the agency shortly after we received the statement.
The Army Corps of Engineers confirmed that it has paused all permitting for well over 100 actions related to renewable energy projects across the country — information that raises more questions than it answers about how government permitting offices are behaving right now.
On Tuesday, I reported that the Trump administration had all but paralyzed environmental permitting decisions on solar and wind projects, even for facilities constructed away from federal lands. According to an internal American Clean Power Association memo sent to the trade association’s members and dated the previous day, the Army Corps of Engineers apparatus for approving projects on federally shielded wetlands had come to a standstill. Officials in some parts of the agency have refused even to let staff make a formal determination as to whether proposed projects touch protected wetlands, I reported.
In a statement to me, the Army Corps has confirmed it has “temporarily paused evaluation on” 168 pending permit actions “focused on regulated activities associated with renewable energy projects.” According to the statement, the Army Corps froze work on those permitting actions “pending feedback from the Administration on the applicability” of an executive order Trump issued on his first day in office, “Unleashing American Energy,” and that the agency “anticipates feedback on or about” February 7 from administration officials.
While the statement demonstrates how vast the potential impacts to the renewables sector may be, it also leaves several important questions unanswered. It’s unclear whether each pending permit action that has been frozen applies to its own individual project, or whether some projects have more than one permit pending before the Army Corps, so it is still fuzzy precisely how many projects may be impacted. The Army Corps did not say whether that feedback would lead to the lifting of holds on permitting activity, nor did it explain why the holds were enacted in the first place.
Finally, there’s one big question that still needs answering: The executive order in question focuses on fossil fuel projects and says nothing about renewable energy — no mentions of “renewable,” no “solar,” no “wind.” Why did this order trigger a permitting freeze in the first place? This level of confusion and ambiguity is part and parcel with other statements in the ACP memo, including that guidance and agency perspectives have varied widely in recent weeks depending on who in the government is being asked.
Climate advocates are already pressing the panic button. “This is a 5 alarm fire alert. This could decimate all the clean energy we worked to pass under Biden,” Nick Abraham, state communications director for League of Conservation Voters, wrote on Bluesky in response to my reporting.
I asked the Army Corps for clarity on how the executive order led to a pause on their permitting activity, and we’ll update this story if we hear back.
The leaders of both countries reached deals with the U.S. in exchange for a 30-day reprieve on border taxes.
U.S. President Donald Trump and Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum announced a month-long pause on across-the-board 25% tariff on Mexican goods imported into the United States that were to take effect on Tuesday.
In a post on Truth Social, Trump said that Sheinbaum had agreed to deploy 10,000 Mexican troops to the U.S.-Mexico border, “specifically designated to stop the flow of fentanyl, and illegal migrants into our Country.” Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Secretary of the Treasury Scott Bessent, and Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick will lead talks in the coming month over what comes next.
“I look forward to participating in those negotiations, with President Sheinbaum, as we attempt to achieve a ‘deal’ between our two Countries,” Trump wrote.
In her own statement, Sheinbaum said the U.S. had committed to work on preventing the trafficking of firearms into Mexico.
There has still been no pause on planned tariffs on Canadian imports, which would likely affect the flow of oil, minerals, and lumber, as well as possibly break automobile supply chains in the United States. Canadian leaders announced several measures to counter the tariffs at both the federal and provincial level.
Trump and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau have spoken today, and are scheduled to do so again this afternoon. Canadian officials are not optimistic, however, that they’ll be able to get a similar deal, a Canadian official told The New York Times.
UPDATE 4:55 p.m. ET: Trudeau announced that he had reached a similar deal that would stave off the imposition of tariffs for a month. Following a “good call” with Trump, Trudeau said in a post on X that he would deploy personnel and resources to his country’s southern border. “Nearly 10,000 frontline personnel are and will be working on protecting the border,” Trudeau wrote. He also said that Canada would have a “Fentanyl Czar” and would “launch a Canada- U.S. Joint Strike Force to combat organized crime, fentanyl and money laundering.”