The House on Thursday passed a major bill reauthorizing agricultural and food programs for the next five years, overcoming GOP infighting that delayed and threatened to derail the legislation this week.
The lower chamber voted 224-200 to pass the measure, with 209 Republicans, 14 Democrats and one independent voting to support it. Three Republicans and 197 Democrats opposed the measure.
Growing opposition to data centers is beginning to expose divides in both parties. Last week, POLITICO reported that progressive challengers in battleground House primaries in Tennessee, Indiana, Virginia, and Maine are backing a national moratorium on datacenter construction. The idea draws on a bill introduced last month by Senator Bernie Sanders and Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, which would freeze new data center construction until Congress passes comprehensive AI legislation addressing the technology’s potential effects on jobs, electricity prices, and the environment. Republicans have seen similar tensions, with proposals for state-level moratoriums surfacing in gubernatorial races in Florida and Michigan.
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These politicians are tapping into real frustration in communities worried about rising utility bills and the rapid pace of data center development. But a construction freeze is the wrong response. It would do little to address the underlying pressures on the electric grid while putting U.S. leadership in AI at risk. A better approach would be for policymakers in Congress and state governments to examine how existing laws and regulations may be limiting the ability of electricity markets to respond to new demand.
Concerns about AI and data centers should be taken seriously. For many Americans, there is real uncertainty. Workers worry that AI may disrupt their livelihoods while residents worry that large-scale development may change their neighborhoods, strain local infrastructure, and affect the environment. These concerns are already showing up as organized opposition to computing facilities and data centers. In Memphis, for example, Elon Musk’s xAI operations have drawn sustained criticism over the environmental impacts of the methane gas turbines used to power them. In Indianapolis, officials recently approved a $500 million data center despite community concerns about environmental effects and rising utility costs.
A January POLITICO/Public First poll found the public nearly split on data centers. A modest plurality, 37 percent of respondents, supported building new facilities in their area, while 28 percent opposed them and another 28 percent had no opinion. When asked about the drawbacks of building data centers in the United States, respondents most often cited higher household electricity costs.
The irony of this consternation is that, so far, there is little evidence that data centers are driving higher household electricity bills. Retail electricity prices have risen nationwide in recent years, but they have generally kept pace with broader inflation. The more important story is variation across states, with some states experiencing sharp increases in retail electricity prices while others have seen modest declines. A study from Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and the Brattle Group examined the factors behind those differences and found that load growth (i.e., growth in the amount of electricity demanded) has often put downward pressure on rates, not upward pressure.
That may sound counterintuitive, but the logic is straightforward. A large share of retail electricity bills goes toward fixed costs for physical infrastructure, including poles, wires, substations, and generators. Those costs must be paid regardless of how much electricity is consumed. When electricity demand grows and those fixed costs are spread across a broader customer base, the average price per unit of electricity can fall.
But the researchers make an important caveat. Load growth only depresses prices when the electricity system is flexible enough to respond to it. New demand in places where generation, transmission, or distribution infrastructure are constrained can create supply shortages and lead to rising prices. As the researchers note, this is the case in many states.
>>>READ: Rubio’s Data Center Diplomacy
That is where policymakers should focus their attention. The real question is not whether data centers should exist, but whether existing laws and regulations are preventing utilities and electricity markets from building, connecting, and delivering the power those facilities require. A national moratorium would do nothing to solve that problem. It would simply restrict investment while leaving the underlying bottlenecks intact.
At the federal level, the most obvious priorities are transmission reform, permitting reform, and clearer rules that allow large energy users, including data centers, to bring new power onto the grid. State policymakers, meanwhile, should examine rules that raise system costs or limit flexibility. These include Renewable Portfolio Standards that require utilities to source a specified share of electricity from renewable resources, as well as net-metering policies and subsidies for behind-the-meter solar that can shift fixed grid costs onto a smaller share of customers.
Fortunately, the idea of a national moratorium on data centers has not made much headway in Congress. Democratic Senator Mark Warner went so far as to call the plan “idiocy.” But the proposal is a useful example of the kind of heavy-handed policymaking lawmakers should avoid. Rather than imposing rules that are likely to be ineffective or counterproductive, policymakers should be asking how to create the market flexibility needed to address legitimate concerns about electricity costs, reliability, and local development. Usually, that means getting government out of the way, not adding new layers of restriction.
The Department of Energy’s (DOE’s) Office of Nuclear Energy and the National Reactor Innovation Center (NRIC) have announced the first four developers selected for the freshly launched Nuclear Energy Launch Pad—a restructured deployment-support initiative that succeeds the DOE’s Reactor Pilot Program and Fuel Line Pilot Program and broadens federal assistance to cover the full nuclear technology stack.
The four initial participants announced on April 27 are Deployable Energy, General Matter, NuCube Energy in partnership with Idaho State University, and Radiant Nuclear.
All four were drawn from the existing pool of applicants to the predecessor pilot programs—the Reactor Pilot Program and the Fuel Line Pilot Program—and were competitively selected by DOE for inclusion, Idaho National Laboratory (INL) said on Monday. “Inclusion in the program allows these companies to begin discussion with NRIC on the enhanced technical, regulatory and deployment support Launch Pad is able to provide,” it said.
Halter, the leading digital operating system for pasture-based ranches, today announced the launch of direct-to-satellite connectivity for its smart cattle collars — a world-first that removes the need for cell towers or on-ranch infrastructure.
Using Starlink, the new technology enables ranchers to manage cattle anywhere they can see the sky. Combined with a suite of new tools for reproduction, animal behavior and precision pasture management, the release significantly expands what is possible for cattle ranch management.
This piece was initially published for RealClearEnergy.
Solar power is now among the cheapest forms of electricity on Earth. Yet the industry still behaves as if it can’t survive without government support.
Since President Donald Trump signed the “One Big Beautiful Bill” last July 4, the solar industry has sounded alarms.
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The law ended the residential solar tax credit immediately and set a firm deadline—this coming July 4—for commercial and utility-scale developers to begin construction if they want to qualify for the remaining 30% Investment Tax Credit. Industry groups have warned of collapse. Lobbyists have flooded Capitol Hill. Obituaries for America’s solar industry are already being drafted.
They’re premature.
The solar industry doesn’t have a subsidy problem. It has a confidence problem. July 4 isn’t a deadline to fear but a milestone that signals American solar is ready to compete without training wheels.
The numbers tell the story. According to the International Renewable Energy Agency, the cost of utility-scale solar has fallen roughly 90% since 2010—from about 46 cents per kilowatt-hour to roughly 4.3 cents today. Solar is now one of the cheapest sources of new electricity generation in the world, trailing only onshore wind. Over the past decade the industry has grown at an average annual rate of about 28%.
The U.S. now has roughly 262 gigawatts of installed solar capacity—enough to power about 45 million homes, according to the Solar Energy Industries Association.
Demand for electricity is also rising quickly. Data centers, the reshoring of manufacturing, and electrification across the economy are creating the largest sustained expansion of American power demand in a generation. Solar is one of the fastest and least expensive ways to meet much of that need, and that advantage doesn’t disappear on July 5.
>>>READ: How Renewables and Batteries Saved the Texas Grid in 2025
All of this means solar is no longer a fragile startup industry. It is one of the most remarkable energy scale-ups in modern American history. The industry simply hasn’t fully accepted that reality.
Solar companies continue to push for the return of tax credits largely because those credits once worked. Two decades ago solar panels were expensive, financing was scarce, and the economics of large projects were uncertain. The Investment Tax Credit gave developers the margin they needed to take risks markets weren’t yet ready to support.
Much like early government incentives helped launch industries ranging from advanced nuclear to biotechnology and aerospace, targeted support helped get American solar off the ground. It bridged the gap between promising technology and a self-sustaining market.
But subsidies are supposed to phase out when industries mature. Solar’s tax credit regime never quite got that memo.
Instead of fading as solar became cost-competitive, the subsidies persisted—and their structure began quietly working against the industry they were meant to help. Because the credit was calculated as a percentage of total project cost, developers were rewarded for how much they spent rather than how efficiently they produced electricity.
>>>READ: What CERAWeek 2026 Says About Energy’s Next Chapter
Analysis by Resources for the Future suggests investment-based credits such as the ITC can steer projects toward higher capital spending rather than operational efficiency, raising total system costs.
Recent bankruptcies tell part of that story. In 2024 SunPower filed for bankruptcy despite billions in federal subsidies flowing through the industry. Dozens of other companies failed in 2024 and 2025. Subsidies didn’t save them; in many cases they simply prolonged flawed business models.
There has also been a geopolitical cost. Much of the global decline in solar prices has been driven by China’s manufacturing dominance. Today China controls more than 80% of global solar panel production and most key upstream supply chains, according to the International Energy Agency report on Solar PV Supply Chains.
The Investment Tax Credit accelerated America’s dependence on that system. By rewarding rapid deployment, it encouraged developers to buy panels from whichever suppliers could ship fastest and cheapest—often Chinese manufacturers.
The result has been two decades of building American energy infrastructure with components largely produced by a strategic competitor.
The new law attempts to correct that imbalance by tightening limits on components from Chinese-controlled supply chains. Critics argue that ending subsidies while restricting Chinese inputs will devastate the industry. In reality, it may provide a long overdue stress test.
Costs may rise temporarily as supply chains shift and domestic manufacturing scales up. But the long-term result could be a solar sector driven by innovation and competition rather than subsidy optimization.
After decades of public support, policymakers aren’t sending the solar industry to its funeral.
They’re celebrating its graduation.
The Supreme Court could limit Americans’ ability to sue pesticide makers over alleged health harms from their products in a case that saw oral arguments on Monday.
At issue is whether people can sue pesticide-makers such as Monsanto for failing to warn consumers of alleged health harms stemming from their products.
The company asked the court to consider the issue, appealing a Missouri verdict that awarded a man named John Durnell $1.25 million as a result of his failure-to-warn claim over Monsanto’s Roundup weed killer.
The Trump administration announced two more payouts Monday for energy companies to walk away from U.S. offshore wind projects under development.
Bluepoint Wind and Golden State Wind have agreed to end their offshore wind leases in exchange for reimbursements totaling nearly $900 million. Both companies have decided not to pursue any new offshore wind projects in the United States, the Interior Department announced Monday.
Bluepoint Wind is an offshore wind project in the early stages of development off the coasts of New Jersey and New York, while Golden State Wind is a floating offshore wind project proposed off California’s central coast.
Scientists have been shooting particles into clouds since the 1940s, praying it will bring more rain and snow.
While researchers agree that “cloud seeding” can work in a laboratory setting, many have doubted how much precipitation it can generate in the real world. But that hasn’t stopped Western states from blasting silver iodide into the sky for decades, hoping it will relieve harsh droughts.
Now, start-up company Rainmaker said it has proved its cloud-seeding drones produced 142 million gallons of water in the form of snow. Some scientists said it’s too soon to know if the results are legitimate, as the data has yet to be peer reviewed, and even then it is a small amount of water in the face of the West’s intense drought. But if confirmed it could be a breakthrough, making it the first commercial cloud-seeding operation to prove it made precipitation.
As members or affiliates of right-of-center organizations, we stand for public policy that upholds competitive markets and limited, effective government. Transmission should be for the benefit of the consumer, not solely for any energy generation source or transmission developer or provider. Our current electric transmission system is the result of decades of poorly designed regulations and political fights over competing energy resources. A consumer-centered approach that would optimize the buildout of new transmission lines and allow competition from non-wire alternatives such as local or on-site generation of all stripes, storage, demand response, grid-enhancing technologies, and microgrids should be adopted. All transmission buildouts should deliver reliable power that meets our nation’s growing needs at the lowest possible cost to end users. The benefits in terms of affordability and reliability of transmission investments must outweigh the costs, and those benefits should not include social, environmental, or other superfluous public policy objectives.
The following principles apply to electric transmission policy, which requires extensive reform to unleash American energy supplies to improve affordability and enhance reliability. Transmission empowers competitive markets by enabling broad trade between power plants and consumers. Today’s policies are not well-suited to replace aging transmission infrastructure cost-effectively or leverage innovative grid technologies, let alone to expand the transmission system to meet rising electric demand growth and accommodate turnover in the generation fleet.
Transmission is one of the most inefficiently regulated forms of infrastructure in the United States. Regulatory flaws reward inefficient projects, underdevelop efficient projects, and underutilize existing infrastructure. This has caused escalating transmission costs to consumers, while the gap between transmission need and infrastructure capacity widens.
We have derived five main principles to guide center-right transmission policy toward an abundant energy future. They are:
A well-functioning transmission system is critical to providing electricity to households and businesses across the country. Yet, upgrading existing infrastructure, voluntary transmission expansion, and permitting new lines is notably difficult. By instilling market discipline and enhancing transparency, policy reforms should enable the private sector to ensure grid reliability at the lowest possible cost.
Devin Hartman, Director of Energy and Environment Policy, R Street Institute
Nick Loris, President, C3 Solutions
Faith Burns, Energy Policy Fellow, Americans for Prosperity
Josh T. Smith, Senior Fellow for Abundance and Environment and Natural Resources at the Pacific Legal Foundation
Taylor Barkley, Director of Federal Government Affairs, the Abundance Institute
Isiah Menning, External Affairs Director, the American Conservation Coalition
Samuel Overly, State Policy Manager, Conservative Energy Network
A research arm of the Chinese government said it had published an atlas of deep-sea mineral deposits, highlighting Beijing’s ambitions to mine the ocean floor and underscoring its disputed claims to waters that neighboring nations consider theirs.
Experts say the maps, in addition to pinpointing mineral deposits found in the deep ocean, give China’s military a thorough understanding of the seafloor in strategically important waters, providing an advantage if submarine warfare were to break out.
The announcement this month by the China Geological Survey puts pressure on other countries that have been ramping up their own seabed mining efforts, in part to reduce their dependence on China for critical minerals and rare earth elements. Ocean sediments are rich in valuable resources including cobalt, nickel, and manganese.
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