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Good morning, happy Friday and happy Juneteenth,
The U.S. and Iran have agreed to an MOU aimed at ending their ongoing conflict and establishing a framework for a broader peace settlement, a development welcomed by world leaders at the G7 summit this week. The news has brought oil prices down, prompting one economist to observe that “sentiment has clearly improved, but sentiment is not the same thing as supply.”
Meanwhile, Senators Warren and Whitehouse plan to take a close look at the $40 billion in “windfall profits” publicly traded oil companies raked in during the first quarter of 2026.
According to new EIA data, “utility-scale solar generation in California exceeded power from gas during 82% of the days this year through May”—a 21% increase, with gas falling 60% for the same period—relative to 2024.
And, SEIA has released a new interactive map that shows solar only uses 0.07% of prime U.S. farmland. By comparison, golf courses occupy nearly three times more land than solar, and six times as much land has been lost to suburban sprawl since 2014.
One stat that caught our eye: “Nearly every state has more abandoned prime farmland than solar-developed prime farmland. Nationally, there are 43 acres of abandoned prime farmland for every acre of solar on prime farmland.”
Read on for more.
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$47 Billion, 21 States
For months, the U.S. wind industry has been dealing with what developers say is a Pentagon freeze on mandatory military reviews for new projects, putting some $47 billion at risk across 21 states. Now, a coalition of nine regional renewable energy organizations is taking the fight to court, asking a federal judge to order the Defense Department to resume reviews. Here’s what you need to know:
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The dispute centers on Pentagon “no hazard” and mitigation reviews that follow FAA airspace screening and are required before construction can proceed. Developers say these reviews were historically routine, typically completed within months, and often resolved through standard mitigation agreements when issues arose.
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Plaintiffs argue that delays began building in 2025 and escalated into a broader breakdown by 2026, when final approvals stopped being issued even on projects that had already negotiated mitigation terms. By April, they say review activity had effectively stopped and meetings with Defense Department officials were no longer occurring.
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In their request for a preliminary injunction, the groups argue the freeze violates federal law governing interagency review and permitting coordination. They warn that continued delays could force projects to miss federal tax credit deadlines or lead to outright cancellations after years of development work and sunk costs.
⚡️ The Takeaway
30 gigawatts, 150+ projects. The Pentagon says it continues to evaluate wind projects for national security impacts but has not provided clear timelines or updated procedures for completing reviews. For developers, the breakdown in a once-predictable checkpoint between FAA clearance and financial close has put a “total halt” on at least 106 projects (ACP previously estimated it’s more than 150 projects) totaling 30 GW that await review, and another 15 GW that are already FAA-cleared but stalled because military brass won’t sign off on mitigation plans. We’ll be watching closely to see what happens next.
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Case Closed
After more than a year of legal wrangling, the Trump administration has officially walked away from its fight to reinstate a federal freeze on new wind project approvals. For wind developers, the move removes a major source of uncertainty and signals that the courts remain skeptical of broad efforts to slow clean energy deployment through executive action. Here’s the play-by-play:
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The dispute began with a January 2025 executive order that paused federal approvals for onshore and offshore wind projects while the administration reviewed permitting and leasing practices. A coalition of 17 states and Washington, D.C., challenged the order, arguing it threatened energy reliability, economic growth, and billions of dollars of clean energy investment.
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In December 2025, a federal judge sided with the states, ruling that the permitting freeze was "arbitrary and capricious" because the administration failed to justify the indefinite pause or provide a timeline for its review. The decision vacated the permitting moratorium, though restrictions on new offshore wind leasing remain in place.
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The administration appealed the ruling in February but never filed its opening brief. Instead, the Department of Justice moved to dismiss the appeal on June 10, and the First Circuit formally closed the case on June 16. The result: federal agencies must continue processing wind permits under existing laws and regulations.
⚡️ The Takeaway
Feds foiled. The ruling adds to a growing list of legal setbacks for federal efforts to impede clean energy development. A Massachusetts federal judge also rejected the administration’s attempt to have a separate lawsuit thrown out. Renewable developers in that case are challenging Interior Department and Army Corps policies they say are slowing wind and solar permitting. The court issued an injunction in April, and on Tuesday allowed the case to proceed while keeping that injunction in place; on Wednesday, the administration announced it’s appealing the decision. Taken together, these events underscore that while permitting and policy uncertainty persist, courts are increasingly limiting the reach of federal actions that could slow renewable project development.
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Rocket Boost for Geothermal
Geothermal power is starting to feel like it’s entering a breakout moment, fueled by rising interest from big tech companies that want always-on clean electricity and by startups scaling up new drilling technologies. But while most of the attention has gone into drilling deeper, hotter wells, a less flashy bottleneck is emerging above ground: the equipment that turns underground heat into electricity.
That’s the problem Spencer Jackson, a former SpaceX rocket engineer, is trying to fix with his startup Critical Energy. His view is that geothermal is about to scale quickly—but the industry is still building power plants like one-off custom projects, with long lead times and expensive, rigid designs that don’t always match what the wells ultimately produce.
His solution borrows from aerospace-style manufacturing: standardization and modularity. Instead of bespoke plants, Critical Energy is designing 5 MW power modules packaged in shipping-container-sized units. These can be built in a factory, shipped to site, and snapped together like Lego bricks. In theory, that could cut deployment times from years to weeks and give developers more flexibility as they test and optimize wells.
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The timing matters because turbine and surface equipment supply is already tight, with a small number of global manufacturers and long delivery queues. Jackson is betting that a faster, modular alternative could unlock stalled projects and help geothermal scale more like other industrial technologies.
The company is still young—it has a small team, a lab prototype in Los Angeles, and plans for a pilot system in the next few years—but it just secured $19 million in seed money, and its approach reflects a broader shift in clean energy toward factory-built, repeatable infrastructure.
What’s interesting here is the crossover: rocket-engineering thinking being applied to power plants. If it works, geothermal could become much faster to deploy—and a lot closer to a plug-and-play clean baseload resource.
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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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