Warning: Renewable prices may double after July 4th
According to a new market insight report from LevelTen Energy, the impending July 4 "tax credit cliff" is poised to rapidly spike power prices, forcing corporate procurement managers to move with extreme speed or face soaring project costs.
It has been nearly a year since the passage of the Trump administration's One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBBA), which established an accelerated timeline for phasing out federal wind and solar tax incentives. Under the law, utility-scale projects must either begin construction by July 4, or be placed in service (PIS) by the end of next year to capture full federal tax credits.
Immediately following the OBBBA's passage in late 2025, PPA prices jumped 7 percent. Looking ahead to the July 4th expiration , developers anticipate that PPA prices will increase 40 percent to 50 percent across the nation.
In ERCOT, which is the system operating within Texas, the price increases are expected to be even more severe. Early transaction data suggests that prices could more than double without tax credits, representing a massive 120 percent spike over last year.
Commercial rooftops could be key in solar siting
Opponents to renewable energy often point to the significant amount of land that is required by solar. But a new study in New Jersey contends that commercial buildings may be the key to siting energy systems.
According to the study, there are 88,429 commercial and industrial rooftops in New Jersey. Together, they can accommodate 22 GW of viable solar potential. Currently only about 7 percent of those rooftops have solar already installed.
That means 17.5 GW of untapped capacity is sitting on roofs that are located at load, are already grid-connected and are already permitted for commercial use. For context, that figure is more than four times New Jersey's current total installed solar capacity. The same structural gap between actual rooftop potential and current solar adoption exists in nearly every commercial market in the country.
Nationwide only about 3.5 percent of commercial and industrial buildings in the United States have solar panels on their roofs. Fully utilizing the 96.5 percent of unused roof space has the potential to add ~145 gigawatts (GW) of solar , nearly doubling the nation's current solar generating capacity.
California sues Trump administration over offshore wind buybacks
The state of California plans to sue the U.S. Department of the Interior over the Trump administration's agreements with offshore wind developers to pay them to abandon planned projects.
California's lawsuit follows last week's announcement from Interior that it reached an agreement with Invenergy to pay the company $765 million to terminate four offshore wind leases.
The lawsuit contends that the federal government violated existing law by not holding a hearing before deciding to cancel the lease; by not suspending the lease for five years before cancellation; by not notifying or coordinating with governors of the affected states; and by not following any existing regulations in place that allow for leases to be cancelled.
According to state officials, California has invested more than $100 million to support the development of wind energy off the coast of the state.
This is not the first time the Trump administration has paid developers NOT to develop offshore wind projects. In cancelling 8 other projects, the administration has agreed to pay $2.5 billion to developers. These buyout agreements are the subject of lawsuits against the administration from the attorneys general for New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Vermont.
Natural Gas "flaring" jumps 6 percent
The amount of natural gas burned at oil and gas production sites jumped 6 percent last year to its highest level since 2019, according to a new report from the World Bank.
"Flaring volumes in 2025 were larger than LNG exports shipped via the Strait of Hormuz, and matched Africa's annual gas consumption," the report states.
This flaring is a big source of planet-warming emissions, releasing CO2 and methane into the atmosphere. Much of the gas could be cost-effectively captured and used for energy rather than wasted, according to analysis from the World Bank and the International Energy Agency.
The purpose of flaring in the oil and gas industry is to safely burn off unwanted, excess, or hazardous natural gas during extraction and processing operations. Flaring is preferred over venting (releasing unburned raw gas directly into the atmosphere). Unburned natural gas is primarily methane, which is a highly potent greenhouse gas. Combustion breaks down methane into less potent carbon dioxide and water vapor.
While fossil fuel producers claim this is the least harmful way to dispose of their waste, the study claims that in some cases, companies use flares simply to dispose of gas that cannot be economically sold because of low prices. It is estimated that roughly 4 percent of all gas produced worldwide is simply flared off into the atmosphere.
Data centers and water use
Water use is fast becoming a defining fight around the AI build out. Critics point to the fact that large data centers not only consume vast amounts of energy but also require a significant amount of water.
Computing processing creates a large amount of heat. Water-based cooling systems generally use less electricity than air-based systems, creating a tradeoff between water consumption and energy demand. Water-intensive cooling has historically been favored because it is less expensive, but it is facing growing public opposition.
Indeed, data centers do use a significant amount of water. But perhaps not as much as many other more common consumers of water who are not subjected to the same level of scrutiny. Mid-sized data centers consume 300,000 to 500,000 gallons per day - or approximately the same amount of water as used by an 18-hole golf course each day during summer months.
The Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory estimated U.S. data centers used about 228 billion gallons of water in 2023. That figure is projected to grow to between 470 billion and 850 billion gallons by 2028. This pales in comparison with water use of, for example, the cattle industry where it is estimated it takes between 1,500 to 2,000 gallons of water to produce one pound of beef.