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Good morning and happy Friday,
While the GOP may have prevailed in passing the OBBB, in doing so they handed the Dems a powerful weapon for the midterms, particularly when it comes to energy costs – and that’s spawned some big, beautiful billboards, as well as a new campaign, RepublicanRateHike.org.
On a related note, we’re wondering if anyone under the age of 70 will get the reference, but Climate Power has released a national TV ad against President Trump’s energy policies that’s a riff on this 1968 ad against Spiro Agnew.
Meanwhile, an internal memo obtained by Politico suggests the administration is considering additional steps to block wind and solar projects and calls for strict new reviews that may delay projects on Federal lands.
But, clean energy advocates can take heart: a new study from Columbia Business School which finds that “solar and wind are ‘economically unstoppable,’ even without tax credits, thanks to dramatic reductions in costs.
Building on that theme, the EIA’s latest short-term outlook finds that in the first half of 2025 solar generation is up 34% compared to last year – “a whopping 99% since 2022” – and it’s expected to hit 7% of total U.S. generation this year…FERC puts solar’s contribution at 11%, and says 78% of new capacity added so far in 2025 is from solar.
Last but not least, Bantam’s President Jonathan joined forces with Jigar Shah to pen a timely op-ed on what it will take to secure the future of clean energy.
Read on for more.
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Building Better Benefits
Community opposition remains one of the top reasons clean energy projects get delayed or denied. But a new report from RMI offers a clear takeaway: the best antidote to opposition is early, authentic, and accountable community engagement. Drawing on dozens of examples from federally funded energy projects, the report identifies “building blocks” that developers, utilities, and co-ops can use to design stronger benefit strategies and earn local support.
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Start early, listen deeply. The strongest campaigns began outreach long before permitting and prioritized two-way dialogue with residents, labor unions, and community-based organizations.
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Let the community define what matters. There’s no universal playbook for benefits. What counts as meaningful varies by place — and only the community can tell you what will make a difference.
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Build trust through transparency. Developers that codified commitments (through CBAs, labor agreements, or public reporting) saw greater community buy-in and less resistance down the line.
⚡️ The Takeaway
Leading the way with CBAs. Smart community engagement—and a well-structured benefit strategy—can be the difference between a stalled project and a shovel-ready one. As the RMI report makes clear, early input, local partnerships, and clear accountability mechanisms are what help developers earn trust and keep momentum. For developers thinking beyond one-off agreements, we recently developed a case study exploring how to design CBA programs that can scale portfolios—offering structure and methodology, while staying responsive to local context.
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Solar + Storage = (Almost) 24/7/365 Clean Power
In recognition of the Northern Hemisphere’s summer solstice last month, the researchers at Ember released a new white paper that looks at the cost of using solar + storage to provide 100% clean power 24 hours a day. Solar—when paired with cheap batteries—is now capable of delivering reliable, round-the-clock power nearly anywhere the sun shines. It’s not just a technical breakthrough, it’s an economic one. See the deets below:
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Reliable solar is now cost-competitive. In sunny regions around the world, solar + storage can deliver 90% round-the-clock electricity for about $100/MWh. In the U.S., Las Vegas can reach 97% reliability at $104/MWh; Washington, D.C. hits 81% at $124/MWh.
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Even partial coverage is a bargain. Lowering the threshold to 60% constant solar drops costs dramatically—just $65/MWh in Vegas, making it cheaper than natural gas.
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This is a big shift. Ember calls it “a fundamental shift” in how solar fits into the grid—making 24/7 clean power contracts possible and reducing the need for expensive grid buildout.
⚡️ The Takeaway
Red states red in the face. Against this backdrop, the GOP has to face the uncomfortable truth that by slashing clean energy credits, the OBBB is expected to cause power prices to soar, “with some of the sharpest increases in Republican-led states.” Energy Innovation broke the numbers down state-by-state, with Kentucky and South Carolina topping the list with an increase of $630 annually by 2035. And as we’ve reported, many experts fear that kneecapping clean energy development will undermine the Republican promise of “energy dominance.” Fingers crossed that the economics of clean energy make it too cheap to fail.
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Unleashing Abundance
Attentive Dispatch readers may recall that back in February, we told you about a study from Duke University’s Nicholas Institute that found it may be possible to add more than 100 GW of new load to the grid without the need for additional capacity. The key to making this work is the use of AI-powered algorithms that modulate demand from flexible loads.
Emerald AI says its software offers just such a solution, and on July 1 announced it had raised $24.5 million in seed funding with backing from NVentures, Nvidia’s venture capital arm. Emerald AI says the funding will support the development of its Emerald Conductor platform which can “turn data centers into grid assets.”
A full test drive of the technology – referred to as “orchestration software” – is already underway at an Oracle data center in Phoenix, Arizona. The data center was reportedly able to “reduce its power consumption by 25% during peak grid demand hours while maintaining AI compute quality.” Additional, larger-scale demonstrations that include “more complex scenarios, such as responding to grid emergencies” are planned.
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The company’s founder and CEO Dr. Varun Sivaram – who was previously Orsted’s chief strategy and innovation officer – is quick to note that Emerald AI “will by no means negate the need to expand and upgrade our energy system,” he says that the software “materially changes the build out needs to meet massive demand expansion.”
Dr. Sivaram told Heatmap that Emerald AI’s solution “unleashes energy abundance using our existing system,” adding that “We should be building a nationwide transmission system. We should be building out generation. We should be doing grid modernization with grid enhancing technologies…[but] we don’t need to overdo it. We don’t need the particularly massive projections that you’re seeing that are going to cause your grandmother’s electricity rates to spike. We can avoid that.” That sounds good to us.
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Thanks for diving into the Developer Dispatch with us.
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Building American power requires a powerful team. |
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