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Good morning and happy Friday,
April 15 was Tax Day, and indeed, it was a taxing week. After marathon talks failed to produce a peace deal over the weekend, the IMF downgraded its global growth outlook and warned that the escalating Iran conflict could trigger a global recession—outlining three scenarios: “weaker, worse and severe, depending on how the war unfolds.”
Under normal circumstances, a drop in global demand for oil would be viewed by many as welcome news. The IEA has “slashed” forecasts due to historic disruption to the markets, saying the price shock “will trigger ‘demand destruction’”. Here in the U.S., Heatmap calculates that the war has already cost Americans $17 billion at the pump.
In other news, the latest report from PowerLines finds that utilities have $1.4 trillion in spending planned through 2030, a 21% jump that’s equivalent to “thousands of Hoover Dams” and threatens to further exacerbate affordability issues.
And ICYMI, opposition to data centers is getting violent. Last Friday, “a 20-year-old man threw a firebomb at the home of OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, then tried to set fire to the company’s headquarters.” The attack came on the heels of a separate incident in Indianapolis in which 13 shots were fired at the home of a councilman who had voted to approve a data center.
Read on for more.
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“The Most Anti-Texan Thing Ever”
Texas has long been the country’s most dynamic clean energy market—but “lawmakers and regulators have unleashed blistering new attacks against solar” even as power demand surges, setting up a clash between market economics and policy direction with real implications for both projects and prices. Here’s what’s happening:
A new wave of political and regulatory actions is introducing fresh uncertainty for solar developers. Lawmakers are raising concerns about foreign-made panels and grid security, and regulators have also intervened in project development, signaling that even advanced solar-plus-storage proposals could face delays or second-looks.
ERCOT continues to see overwhelming interconnection demand from solar and storage, driven by strong economics. But policymakers are discussing changes to favor dispatchable resources like natural gas—potentially reshaping pricing dynamics and long-term revenue assumptions.
State support is tilting toward gas. Texas has already deployed billions in incentives for new gas generation, and regulators are questioning whether renewables can meet reliability needs on their own. That raises the risk that market rules—not cost competitiveness—will determine which projects move forward.
The consequences extend to ratepayers—solar has played a major role in keeping electricity prices down as demand rises from data centers and industry, but delayed deployment will force greater reliance on higher-cost generation, pushing electricity bills higher.
⚡️ The Takeaway
Solar squeeze. Texas’ biennial legislature only meets in odd-numbered years, so much of the near-term policy direction is currently in the hands of regulators and the executive branch. Attention is already shifting toward the 2027 legislative session, which begins in January and is likely to be existentially important for developers as debates over market design, gas incentives, and renewable growth come to a head. As one expert put it, shifting away from low-cost renewables toward more expensive generation will raise prices and limit growth—“the most anti-Texan thing ever.”
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Hyperlocal Risk
Clean energy developers know that local resistance to utility-scale renewables is becoming a defining constraint on project development. A recent Associated Press report highlights the growing wave of county-level bans, while Canary Media zooms in on one Ohio community where that trend is now being actively challenged at the ballot box. Together, they offer a
clearer picture of the risk and the emerging playbook for response. Here’s a closer look:
Ohio’s Senate Bill 52 gives counties broad authority to restrict wind and solar. But when local officials block projects under state law, the consequences are real: at a minimum, lost revenue, and in worst-case scenarios, financial pressure to sell land and the loss of multigenerational farms.
In Richland County, Ohio, no utility-scale solar or wind projects have even been proposed. Nevertheless, after commissioners approved restrictions, residents organized rapidly gathering signatures to force a referendum.
While anti-renewable efforts often tie into farmland preservation narratives and, at times, leverage broader energy advocacy networks, clean energy proponents in Richland County are reframing projects as economic development tools that can coexist with agriculture through approaches like agrivoltaics, rather than as land use tradeoffs.
Their arguments focus on property rights, job creation, and preserving optionality for landowners; “the Richland County Citizens for Property Rights and Job Development has been using a slogan meant to win over their neighbors: ‘No Ban on Property Rights.’”
⚡️ The Takeaway
Siting showdown. The Richland referendum will be decided on May 5 as part of the county’s primary election. We’ll be watching closely to see if enough support coalesces around property rights and economic resilience for the measure to prevail, but for developers, the implication is clear: policy risk is now hyperlocal, and outcomes may hinge as much on community narratives and local governance processes as on project fundamentals. Success will depend less on top-down policy certainty and more on early community alignment, coalition-building, and framing projects in terms that resonate locally.
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Moonshot for the Grid
Tapestry, Alphabet’s “moonshot” initiative, is building what it describes as a “Google Maps for electrons,” and its partnership with PJM—the largest regional transmission organization in the U.S.—is now focused squarely on one of the biggest pain points in clean energy development: interconnection queues.
PJM serves 65 million customers across the mid-Atlantic and Midwest and is facing a surge in load growth driven in part by data centers, alongside a backlog of roughly 200 GW of renewable generation waiting in its interconnection queue. Against that backdrop, Tapestry is deploying HyperQ, an agentic AI tool designed to rapidly review interconnection applications and confirm they meet all procedural and technical requirements.
What normally takes power systems engineers weeks of painstaking review can now be completed in minutes. HyperQ can process filings that reach up to 6,000 pages long, automatically flagging missing elements or compliance issues.
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That matters because these applications are not only massive, but highly nuanced: they must include specific formatting like company letterhead, sometimes require “wet” ink signatures instead of e-signatures, and contain detailed technical schematics alongside evidence of land ownership, project design, and financing commitments.
As Page Crahan, Tapestry’s general manager, noted, the process often involves PhD-level engineers combing through hundreds of pages per project just to verify completeness—work that is essential but not the best use of scarce expert time.
HyperQ rolls out this year; in addition, Tapestry is also introducing a unified modeling approach at PJM. This system aims to give operators granular visibility into the entire grid by ingesting trillions of data points—from weather patterns and asset health (like transformers) to real-time electron flow.
The goal is a continuously improving digital model of grid behavior, with Tapestry arguing that expanding data inputs only strengthens its predictive accuracy over time. Together, these tools aim to reduce friction in interconnection processing while improving system-wide planning visibility—both critical as developers race to bring new clean generation online in increasingly constrained grids.
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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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