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FALMOUTH – Solect Energy has announced it is partnering with the Town of Falmouth on new solar carports at Falmouth High School and North Falmouth Elementary. Hopkinton, Mass-based Solect says the Hopkinton, Mass-based Solect says the projects will deliver clean energy and long-term savings at no capital cost to the town.
Dear Diary. As far as Republican mentality goes since before the time of Ronald Reagan during the 1980s, central government should be drowned in a bathtub. Everything done for the public besides military defense should be left up to state governments. Trump and his cronies are just continuing that line of thinking via policy. The line of faulty logic behind this is that society and people in general will prosper more if money and resources ‘trickle down’ from those who will become wealthier via less federal taxes. This is nonsense looking at history. During the first Gilded Age from about 1870 through World War I and the 1920s we saw a great disparity between classes. Human greed from robber barons didn’t permit much money from tickling down to the poor. It was only after Franklin Roosevelt was elected because of the advent of the Great Depression that federal programs were implemented that greatly alleviated suffering. This meant that upper classes were taxed more, who have been fighting to undo what FDR in the 1930s and Lynden Johnson and Richard Nixon implemented during the 1960s and 1970s. One such program is FEMA or the Federal Emergency Management Agency. I ask, would it be better if every individual state took care of natural disaster victims? I seriously doubt that. A couple of CAT4/5 hurricanes hitting say Louisiana or Florida would strain those state government budgets such that most people would not get much help. Then again maybe Republicans want an everyone for themselves society such that if you get hit be horrendous weather or wildfires, too bad. This is madness considering that climate change is producing an increasing number of deadly natural disasters. Here is more Trump madness to start of the New Year:
The massive energy needs of artificial intelligence data centers became a major political controversy in 2025, and new reporting suggests that it will grow even further in 2026. CNBC reported on Thursday that data center projects have become political lightning rods among politicians ranging from Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) on the left to Republican Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis on the right. However, objections to data centers aren’t just coming from politicians but from ordinary citizens who are worried about the impact such projects will have on their local environment and their utility bills.
Despite all the hype, overall global nuclear capacity shrunk in 2025 as retirements outstripped additions. Still, the sector could rebound in the coming years. For press releases, policy changes, and promises to build new nuclear power, 2025 was a gangbusters year. For actually adding new reactors to the grid, not so much. In fact, around the world, more gigawatts’ worth of nuclear reactors were retired than turned on this year, according to new data from the consultancy BloombergNEF.
A plan to help local communities pay their share of the long-sought Arkansas River Valley conduit passed Congress with strong bipartisan support, but has still come up one vital signature short of becoming a reality. President Donald Trump on Tuesday vetoed the “Finish the Arkansas Valley Conduit Act” despite its sponsorship by fellow Republicans and the significant benefits it would provide to southeastern Colorado, where his support runs deep. The conduit, which broke ground in 2023, will provide clean water for farming, factories and households. The bill would have given local communities 100 years to pay back no-interest federal loans for their share of the project. "President Trump decided to veto a completely non-controversial, bipartisan bill that passed both the House and Senate unanimously,” Boebert said. “If this administration wants to make its legacy blocking projects that deliver water to rural Americans; that's on them." Boebert also questioned the president’s motives for the veto, suggesting it might be retribution because she helped ensure a vote on releasing the Epstein files.
The Trump administration brought the sledgehammer down on clean energy — but that still wasn't enough to crush it. Five and a half months. That’s all the time Donald Trump needed to crush the only major climate law the United States ever managed to pass. It was swift work, using a sledgehammer and not a scalpel, and now the energy transition will have to make do with the fragments of the law that remain. The words bleak and dispiriting come to mind. How else to describe the fact that the U.S. entered the year implementing an ambitious if inadequate decarbonization law, and is now exiting 2025 with that law all but repealed? But there were also some reasons to be hopeful about the energy transition this year — if you knew where to look. Let’s start with the numbers.
Climate change driven by human burning of fossil fuels helped make 2025 one of the hottest years ever recorded, a scientific report published Monday affirmed, prompting renewed calls for urgent action to combat the worsening planetary emergency. Researchers at World Weather Attribution (WWA) found that “although 2025 was slightly cooler than 2024 globally, it was still far hotter than almost any other year on record,” with only two other recent years recording a higher average worldwide temperature.
HYANNIS – A federal judge has set a hearing on January 16th for a lawsuit filed over the Trump Administration’s pause on wind energy projects. A Virginia offshore wind project, Dominion Energy, asked a federal judge to block an order that halted construction of their project, along with four others, including Vineyard Wind in Massachusetts, over national security concerns. Dominion said that the government’s order from last week was arbitrary and unconstitutional.
The U.S. has become a "side character" in the global story of renewable energy, experts say. China dominates the sector, with positive implications for the climate and their economy.
New digital meter socket adapters from Tesla and others make home solar, battery, and EV charging installs a snap. But only if utilities let homes use them.
President Donald Trump spent most of 2025 hacking away at large parts of the federal government. His administration fired, bought out, or otherwise ousted hundreds of thousands of federal employees. Entire agencies were gutted. By so many metrics, this year in politics has been defined more by what has been cut away than by what’s been added on. One tiny corner of regulation, however, has actually grown under Trump: the critical minerals list. Most people likely hadn’t heard of “critical minerals” until early this year when the president repeatedly inserted the phrase into his statements, turning the once obscure policy realm into a household phrase. Trump took unusual steps in 2025 to strengthen American control over a supply chain crucial to many industries — and to the clean energy transition.
For more than a century, solar panels have always been flat; however, Japan has achieved the impossible yet again. Kyosemi’s Sphelar® reaches a milestone by asking the question of why solar panels have to be flat and then proving that solar panels do not have to be flat. Although the early days of photovoltaics from the 1880s prescribed solar panels that needed to be designed based on the materials sourced for the panels, Japan is opting to be guided by the direction of the sun. Back in 1883, solar panels had been built by Charles Fritts by coating a selenium base with a thin metal layer to produce power. While the initial solar panels were pure genius, they tended to be rather rigid. This flat panel was rather lucrative for conditions where the light source was still. The static panel, however, could not fully capture the sun from all directions. The founder of Kyosemi’s Sphelar®, Mr. Nakata, questioned why all solar panels had to be flat. With this curiosity, it was decided that solar panels could be spherical in shape instead.
A widespread power outage in San Francisco that led to Waymo robotaxis stalling and snarling traffic earlier this month has raised concerns about the readiness of autonomous vehicle operators to tackle major emergencies like earthquakes and floods.
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2025 has been an eventful year in energy news, both nationally and here in Massachusetts. To help take stock of what's transpired over the last 12 month, and what may be coming next year, WBUR spoke with Secretary of Energy and Environmental Affairs Rebecca Tepper.
An ex-FEMA official said the agency can’t do disaster response and recovery without the staff that are being laid off. The Trump administration this week made abrupt cuts to the top federal disaster response agency, even as US communities face increased threats from natural disasters caused by the global climate crisis. Independent journalist Marisa Kabas reported on Wednesday that the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) “has begun issuing termination notices” to staff at the agency’s Cadre of On-Call Response and Recovery (CORE) that are effective as of January 2. A FEMA staffer who spoke with Kabas described the terminations as “The New Year’s Eve Massacre,” and explained that “the driving force behind all CORE employees is supporting and enacting the mission of preparing for, responding to, and recovering from disasters.” A Thursday report from CNN added some additional details to Kabas’ reporting, including that the decision to issue the layoffs was made by Acting Administrator Karen Evans, who was appointed to the role after former Acting Administrator David Richardson resigned in November. One former FEMA official bluntly told CNN that the agency “can’t do disaster response and recovery without CORE employees” that are being laid off by the administration.
Construction will be paused for 90 days as Trump's "Department of War" and Interior Department coordinate to evaluate supposed "national security" risks. The Interior Department announced Monday it is pausing leases for all five large-scale offshore wind projects under construction in America, citing unspecified issues of national security. Canary Media obtained a copy of a letter notifying one of the affected wind farm developers, providing new details about the move — the Trump administration’s most sweeping attempt yet to halt offshore wind construction.
The AI boom has caused as much carbon dioxide to be released into the atmosphere in 2025 as emitted by the whole of New York City, it has been claimed. The global environmental impact of the rapidly spreading technology has been estimated in research published on Wednesday, which also found that AI-related water use now exceeds the entirety of global bottled-water demand. The figures have been compiled by the Dutch academic Alex de Vries-Gao, the founder of Digiconomist, a company that researches the unintended consequences of digital trends. He claimed they were the first attempt to measure the specific effect of artificial intelligence rather than datacentres in general as the use of chatbots such as OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Google’s Gemini soared in 2025. The figures show the estimated greenhouse gas emissions from AI use are also now equivalent to more than 8% of global aviation emissions. His study used technology companies’ own reporting and he called for stricter requirements for them to be more transparent about their climate impact.
Dec 30, 2025 Cape Cod’s freshwater ponds are defining features of the region’s landscape, dynamic systems that support wildlife, recreation, and community character. With nearly 900 ponds and lakes covering close to 11,000 acres, they form an extensive yet fragile network of freshwater resources. Understanding and protecting these systems depends on accurate, consistent scientific data. Across the region, efforts to collect and compile pond data are expanding. One of the most significant data gaps in fully assessing pond health is bathymetry.
Post-Fukushima nuclear closures of dozens of reactors forced the country to rely heavily on imported fossil fuels. The stillness of a bitterly cold afternoon is broken by the swish, swoosh of three 50m-long blades, adjusting automatically to the tiniest shift in the direction of a dependable westerly wind that keeps them turning day and night. From here, up on a mountain ridge in rural Fukushima prefecture in north-east Japan, the wind turbines stretch for miles. In the distance, you can see the outlines of the reactor buildings at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, which is in the slow process of being decommissioned at a cost so far of $35bn (£26bn) almost 15 years since it suffered a triple meltdown after being struck by a magnitude-9.0 earthquake and a 15m (49ft) tsunami. Another nuclear plant further south stands idle. But the 46 turbines that make up the sprawling Abukuma windfarm – the biggest onshore windfarm in Japan – could offer hope for a different future for the region’s energy supply.
Ismet Booley, a dentist in Cape Town, had a serious problem a few years ago. Patients showed up for appointments, only to find the power had gone out. No power meant no X-rays, no fillings, no root canals. “I just couldn’t work,” Dr. Booley said. South Africans like Dr. Booley have found a remedy for power cuts that have plagued people in the developing world for years. Thanks to swiftly falling prices of Chinese made solar panels and batteries, they now draw their power from the sun. These aren’t the tiny, old-school solar lanterns that once powered a lightbulb or TV in rural communities. Today, solar and battery systems are deployed across a variety of businesses — auto factories and wineries, gold mines and shopping malls. And they are changing everyday life, trade and industry in Africa’s biggest economy. This has happened at startling speed. Solar has risen from almost nothing in 2019 to roughly 10 percent of South Africa’s electricity-generating capacity.
Species that is critically endangered in Britain is spotted in Mersey, Bollin and Goyt rivers in north-west
NANTUCKET – The Town of Nantucket will begin accepting claims next month in connection to last summer’s Vineyard Wind turbine blade failure. The July 13th, 2024 incident scattered foam, fiberglass and other debris along Nantucket’s shores, as well as other parts of the Cape and Islands.
This year in energy has been an absolute blur. We started with President Donald Trump’s declaration of a federal energy emergency, saw the gutting of clean-energy tax credits, and finished with an Election Day where affordability took center stage. Now, with 2025 almost behind us, let’s rewind and revisit the 10 stories that defined this year. Trump declares an energy emergency On his first day in office, Trump set course for a total revamp of the American energy landscape. Step one: Citing rising power demand to declare a national emergency on energy, all while freezing funds for clean energy programs. Trump proceeded to use that “emergency” to prop up fossil fuels — more on that below.
Drive through the plains of Iowa or Kansas and you’ll see more than rows of corn, wheat and soybeans. You’ll also see towering wind turbines spinning above fields and solar panels shining in the sun on barns and machine sheds. For many farmers, these are lifelines. Renewable energy provides steady income and affordable power, helping farms stay viable when crop prices fall or drought strikes. But some of that opportunity is now at risk as the Trump administration cuts federal support for renewable energy. Rural counties also benefit in jobs, manufacturing and tax revenue that will be hard to replace as the US government slashes support for the industries.
The US Department of the Interior's halt on offshore wind projects raises questions of conflicts of interest and legality. Is this move truly in the interest of national security, or is it a ploy to benefit fossil fuel investments? Congress must act to uncover the truth and uphold the rule of law. Timothy Whitehouse, executive director of Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER), wrote to the top members of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee and the House Committee on Natural Resources regarding the pause on projects off the coasts of Virginia, New York, Rhode Island, Connecticut, and Massachusetts—projects that account for billions of dollars in investment, employ thousands of people, and generate sustainable energy for roughly 2.5 million homes and businesses.
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