Solar News This Week - September 20, 2026
Largest floating array installed in Ohio comes online
D3Energy has energized a 6-MW floating solar array on a village reservoir in Monroeville, Ohio. It is the largest floating solar system in the state and among the five largest in the country.
Roughly one-third of Ohio's 88 counties have restricted utility-scale solar since a 2021 state law gave them that authority. Monroeville has embraced solar for nearly a decade. The village's 4-MW ground-mounted array has been running since 2017.
The floating array is Monroeville's second solar project. Its array floats on 12 acres of water the village already owned. Between the two, the village of 1,300 has roughly 13-times as much solar per resident as the rest of Ohio, one of the highest concentrations per capita in the state.
Tesla's solar gigafactory clears key tax hurdle
Tesla's proposed $10.1 billion solar cell and module manufacturing facility in Texas has cleared a major local regulatory hurdle following a unanimous vote by a Houston-area school board.
The board of trustees for the Lamar Consolidated Independent School District voted 7-0 to approve a property tax incentive agreement for the project. The application proposes to build on a 3,050-acre factory site.
The agreement provides a 10-year property tax limitation on the taxable value of eligible property for school district maintenance and operations from 2029 through 2038. Tesla projects that the plant will create 9,712 permanent full-time positions once fully operational, along with 1,147 peak construction jobs.
Construction is targeted to span from 2026 through 2028, with commercial production scheduled to start in the first quarter of 2029.
EPA scraps environmental requirements on fossil-fuel power plants
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency finalized a partial repeal of the Biden-era 2024 Carbon Pollution Standards on September 14, of this year, removing greenhouse gas limits and carbon capture mandates for fossil-fuel power plants.
The action scraps existing fossil-fuel emission guidelines for legacy generating units. It also Removes the 90 percent carbon capture requirements for new baseload gas turbines and modified coal plants. The EPA has also announced their intention to strip all remaining power plant greenhouse gas rules under the Clean Air Act.
The Trump administration justifies these actions by claiming that removal of the emissions standards will make fossil fuel power plants more competitive and enhance the stability of the grid - while saving the industry an estimated $300 billion in regulatory costs.
Others however disagree. The Environmental Defense Fund commissioned a study that concluded the action will result in the pollution equivalent to adding 1.6 billion cars to the roadways. They estimate scrapping the environmental mandates on fossil fuel power plants will result in 84,000 premature deaths, 28 million more asthma attacks, deliver health harms costing up to $1.2 trillion and deliver climate-related damage up to $1.8 trillion over the next 20 years.
71 percent of voters want more renewable energy
Nearly three-quarters (or 71 percent) of American voters say making renewable energy a bigger part of the country's energy supply is the right move, according to a new survey conducted by Republican pollster Alex Lundry on behalf of Centreline Liberties and Citizens for Responsible Energy Solutions.
A clear majority (58 percent) of voters say they are more likely to support a federal candidate that strongly supports renewables.
The data reveals that renewable energy receives broad bipartisan support, especially solar (79 percent favorable) and wind (74 percent). Broken down by self-declared party preference, Democrats report an 89 percent favorable opinion of solar energy and 84 percent favorability of wind. Republicans support solar energy with a 62 percent approval rating, with 47 percent supporting wind energy and Independents support solar energy at 73 percent and 51 percent of Independents support the use of wind energy.