Wind turbines generate electricity at the Block Island Wind Farm on July 7, 2022, near Block Island, Rhode Island. The first commercial offshore wind farm in the United States is located in the Atlantic Ocean 3.8 miles from Block Island, Rhode Island. The five-turbine, 30 MW project was developed by Deepwater Wind and began operations in December, 2016. (Photo by John Moore/Getty Images)

WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump’s administration said Monday it’s halting leases for five large-scale offshore wind projects under construction along the East Coast due to national security risks.

The Interior Department paused the projects — off the coasts of Rhode Island, Connecticut, Massachusetts, Virginia and New York — due to analysis from reports that have “long found that the movement of massive turbine blades and the highly reflective towers create radar interference,” which poses a national security risk, according to a department release.

“Today’s action addresses emerging national security risks, including the rapid evolution of the relevant adversary technologies, and the vulnerabilities created by large-scale offshore wind projects with proximity near our east coast population centers,” Interior Secretary Doug Burgum said in a statement alongside the announcement. 

The Interior Department said “the clutter caused by offshore wind projects obscures legitimate moving targets and generates false targets in the vicinity of the wind projects.” 

The department said leases for Vineyard Wind 1, off Massachusetts; Revolution Wind, off Rhode Island and Connecticut; Coastal Virginia Offshore Wind; along with Sunrise Wind and Empire Wind 1, off New York, have been paused “effective immediately.” 

The department noted that the pause would give it, the Defense Department and other agencies “time to work with leaseholders and state partners to assess the possibility of mitigating the national security risks posed by these projects.” 

The moves are part of the administration’s continued attacks against the renewable energy source, which have spilled into courts. A federal judge found this month that Trump’s January order halting permits for offshore wind projects was unlawful. 

‘Desperate rerun’ 

The action drew swift backlash from major environmental advocacy groups and Democratic officials. 

Ted Kelly, director and lead counsel for U.S. clean energy at Environmental Defense Fund, said in a Monday statement the administration is “again unlawfully blocking clean, affordable energy.”

The administration has “baselessly and unlawfully attacked wind energy with delays, freezes and cancellations, while propping up aging, expensive coal plants that barely work and pollute our air,” Kelly added.

Kate Sinding Daly, senior vice president for law and policy at the Conservation Law Foundation, described the move as a “desperate rerun of the Trump administration’s failed attempt to kill offshore wind — an effort the courts have already rejected.” 

She added that many of the projects had already won approvals through “rigorous review” and court challenges.

“Trying again to halt these projects tramples on the rule of law, threatens jobs, and deliberately sabotages a critical industry that strengthens, not weakens, America’s energy security,” she said. 

U.S. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer also weighed in, saying in a Monday social media post Trump was “trying AGAIN to kill thousands of good-paying union jobs and raise your electricity bill.”  

The New York Democrat said he’s “been fighting Trump’s war against offshore wind — a war that threatens American jobs and American energy” and vowed to continue fighting “to make sure these projects, the thousands of jobs they create, and the energy they provide can continue.” 

Rhode Island lawmakers slam pause 

Lawmakers in Rhode Island were also quick to blast the administration’s effort, which affects the Revolution Wind project off its own coast. 

Rep. Seth Magaziner said that “at a time when working people in Rhode Island are struggling with high costs on everything, Trump should not be canceling energy projects that are nearly ready to deliver reliable power to the grid at below-market rates and help lower costs.” 

The Rhode Island Democrat rebuked the administration’s claims that Revolution Wind and the other offshore wind projects present national security concerns as “unfounded,” noting that “the Department of Defense thoroughly reviewed and signed off on this project during the permitting and approval process.” 

Rhode Island Democratic Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse said in a statement Monday that Revolution Wind “was long ago thoroughly vetted and fully permitted by the federal government, and that review included any potential national security questions.” 

Whitehouse, the ranking member of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, said the move “looks more like the kind of vindictive harassment we have come to expect from the Trump administration than anything legitimate.” 

“This is President Donald ‘Stop Work’ Trump trying to keep affordable, clean energy off the grid, without a care about how many working people have to lose their jobs to keep his fossil fuel billionaires happy,” he said. 

In a statement Monday, Sen. Jack Reed noted that amid an increase in energy prices, policymakers should be promoting new energy sources.

“Trump’s repeated attacks on offshore wind are holding our nation back, increasing energy bills, and hurting our economy,” the Rhode Island Democrat said. 

Reading Time: 11 minutes

For decades, corn has reigned over American agriculture. It sprawls across 90 million acres — about the size of Montana — and goes into everything from livestock feed and processed foods to the ethanol blended into most of the nation’s gasoline. 

But a growing body of research reveals that America’s obsession with corn has a steep price: The fertilizer used to grow it is warming the planet and contaminating water.

Corn is essential to the rural economy and to the world’s food supply, and researchers say the problem isn’t the corn itself. It’s how we grow it. 

Corn farmers rely on heavy fertilizer use to sustain today’s high yields. And when that nitrogen breaks down in the soil, it releases nitrous oxide, a greenhouse gas nearly 300 times more potent than carbon dioxide. Producing nitrogen fertilizer also emits large amounts of carbon dioxide, adding to its climate footprint.

Agriculture accounts for more than 10% of U.S. greenhouse gas emissions, and corn uses more than two-thirds of all nitrogen fertilizer nationwide — making it the leading driver of agricultural nitrous oxide emissions, studies show.

The corn and ethanol industries insist that rapid growth in ethanol — which now consumes more than 40% of the U.S. corn crop —  is a net environmental benefit, and they strongly dispute research suggesting otherwise.

Since 2000, U.S. corn production has surged almost 50%, further adding to the crop’s climate impact. 

Yet the environmental costs of corn rarely make headlines or factor into political debates. Much of the dynamic traces back to federal policy — and to the powerful corn and ethanol lobby that helped shape it. 

The Renewable Fuel Standard, passed in the mid 2000s, required that gasoline be blended with ethanol, a biofuel that in the United States comes almost entirely from corn. That mandate drove up demand and prices for corn, spurring farmers to plant more of it. 

Many plant corn year after year on the same land. The practice, called “continuous corn,” demands massive amounts of nitrogen fertilizer and drives especially high nitrous oxide emissions. 

At the same time, federal subsidies make it more lucrative to grow corn than to diversify. Taxpayers have covered more than $50 billion in corn insurance premiums over the past 30 years, according to federal data compiled by the Environmental Working Group.

Researchers say proven conservation steps — such as planting rows of trees, shrubs and grasses in corn fields — could sharply reduce these emissions. But the Trump administration has eliminated many of the incentives that helped farmers try such practices. 

Experts say it all raises a larger question: If America’s most widely planted crop is worsening climate change, shouldn’t we begin growing it a different way?

How corn took over America

Corn has been a staple of U.S. agriculture for centuries, first domesticated by Native Americans and later used by European immigrants as a versatile crop for food and animal feed. Its production really took off in the 2000s after federal mandates and incentives helped turn much of America’s corn crop into ethanol.

Corn’s dominance — and the emissions that come with it — didn’t happen by accident. It was built through a high-dollar lobbying campaign that continues today.

In the late 1990s, America’s corn farmers were in trouble. Prices had cratered amid a global grain glut and the Asian financial crisis. A 1999 report by the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis said crop prices had hit “rock bottom.”

In 2001 and 2002, the federal government gave corn farmers and ethanol producers a boost — first through the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Bioenergy Program, which paid ethanol producers to increase their use of farm commodities for fuel. Then the 2002 Farm Bill created programs that continue to support ethanol and other renewable energy.

Corn growers soon after mounted an all-out campaign in Washington. Their goal: persuade Congress to require gasoline to be blended with ethanol. State and national grower groups lobbied relentlessly, pitching ethanol as a way to cut greenhouse gasses, reduce oil dependence and revive rural economies.

“We got down to a couple of votes in Congress, and the corn growers were united like never before,” recalled Jon Doggett, then the industry’s chief lobbyist, in an article published by the National Corn Growers Association. “I started receiving calls from Capitol Hill saying, ‘Would you have your growers stop calling us? We are with you.’ I had not seen anything like it before and haven’t seen anything like it since.”

Their persistence paid off. In 2005, Congress created the Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS), which requires that a certain amount of ethanol be blended into U.S. gasoline each year. Two years later, lawmakers expanded it further. The policy transformed the market: The amount of corn used for ethanol domestically has more than tripled in the past 20 years.

When demand for corn spiked as a result of the RFS, it pushed up prices worldwide, said Tim Searchinger, a researcher at Princeton University’s School of Public and International Affairs. The result, Searchinger said, is that more land around the world got cleared to grow corn. That, in turn, resulted in more emissions. 

That lobbying brought clout. “King Corn” became a political force, courted by presidential hopefuls and protected by both parties. Since 2010, national corn and ethanol trade groups have spent more than $55 million on lobbying and millions more on political donations, according to campaign finance records analyzed by Floodlight. 

In 2024 alone, those trade groups spent twice as much on lobbying as the National Rifle Association. Major industry players — Archer Daniels Midland, Cargill and ethanol giant POET among them — have poured even more into Washington, ensuring the sector’s voice remains one of the loudest in U.S. agriculture.

Now those same groups are pushing for the next big prize: expanding higher-ethanol gasoline blends and positioning ethanol-based jet fuel as aviation’s “low-carbon” future.

Research undercuts ethanol’s clean fuel claims

Corn and ethanol trade groups didn’t make their officials available for interviews.

But on their websites and in their literature, they have promoted corn ethanol as a climate-friendly fuel. 

The Renewable Fuels Association cites government and university research that finds burning ethanol reduces greenhouse gas emissions by roughly 40-50% compared with gasoline. The ethanol industry says the climate critics have it wrong — and that most of the corn used for fuel comes from better yields and smarter farming, not from plowing up new land. The amount of fertilizer required to produce a bushel of corn has dropped sharply in recent decades, they say.

“Ethanol reduces carbon emissions, removing the carbon equivalent of 12 million cars from the road each year,” according to the Renewable Fuels Association.

Growth Energy, a major ethanol trade group, said in a written statement that U.S. farmers and biofuel producers are “constantly finding new ways to make their operations more efficient and more environmentally beneficial,” using things like cover crops to reduce their carbon footprint.

But some research tells a different story.

A recent Environmental Working Group report finds that the way corn is grown in much of the Midwest — with the same fields planted in corn year after year — carries a heavy climate cost.

Research in 2022 by agricultural land use expert Tyler Lark and colleagues links the Renewable Fuel Standard to expanded corn cultivation, heavier fertilizer use, worsening water pollution and increased emissions. Scientists typically convert greenhouse gases like nitrous oxide and methane into their carbon dioxide equivalents — or carbon intensity — so their warming impacts can be compared on the same scale.

“The carbon intensity of corn ethanol produced under the RFS is no less than gasoline and likely at least 24% higher,” the authors concluded.

Lark’s research has been disputed by scientists at Argonne National Laboratory, Purdue University and the University of Illinois, who published a formal rebuttal arguing the study relied on “questionable assumptions” and faulty modeling — a charge Lark’s team has rejected.

A 2017 report by the U.S. Government Accountability Office found that the RFS was unlikely to meet its greenhouse gas goals because the U.S. relies predominantly on corn ethanol and produces relatively little of the cleaner, advanced biofuels made from waste. 

The problem isn’t just emissions, researchers say. Corn ethanol requires millions of acres that could instead be used for food crops or more efficient energy sources. One recent study found that solar panels can generate as much energy as corn ethanol on roughly 3% of the land. 

“It’s just a terrible use of land,” Searchinger, the Princeton researcher, said of ethanol. “And you can’t solve climate change if you’re going to make such terrible use of land.”

Most of the country’s top crop isn’t feeding people. More than 40% of U.S. corn goes to ethanol. A similar amount is used to feed livestock, and just 12% ends up as food or in other uses.

As corn production rises, so have emissions 

Globally, corn production doubled from 2000 to 2021. 

That growth has been fueled by fertilizer, which emits nitrous oxide that can linger in the atmosphere for more than a century. That eats away at the ozone layer, which blocks most of the sun’s harmful ultraviolet radiation.

Global emissions have soared alongside corn production. Between 1980 and 2020, nitrous oxide emissions from human activity climbed 40%, the Global Carbon project found. 

In the United States, nitrous oxide emissions from agriculture in 2022 were equal to roughly 262 million metric tons of carbon dioxide, according to the EPA’s inventory of greenhouse gas emissions. That’s equivalent to putting almost 56 million passenger cars on the road.

The biggest increases are coming straight from the Corn Belt.

Ethanol’s climate footprint isn’t the only concern. The nitrogen used to grow corn and other crops is also a key source of drinking water pollution.

According to a new report by the Alliance for the Great Lakes and Clean Wisconsin, more than 90% of nitrate contamination in Wisconsin’s groundwater is linked to agricultural sources — mostly synthetic fertilizer and manure. 

The same analysis estimates that in 2022, farmers applied more than 16 million pounds of nitrogen beyond what crops needed, sending runoff into wells, streams and other water systems.

For families like Tyler Frye’s, that hits close to home. In 2022, Frye and his wife moved into a new home in the rural village of Casco, Wisconsin, about 20 miles east of Green Bay. A free test soon afterward found their well water had nitrate levels more than twice the EPA’s safe limit. “We were pretty shocked,” he said. 

Frye installed a reverse-osmosis system in the basement and still buys bottled water for his wife, who is breastfeeding their daughter, born in July.

One likely culprit, he suspects, are the cornfields less than 200 yards from his home. 

“Crops like corn require a lot of nitrogen,” he said. “A lot of that stuff, I assume, is getting into the well water and surface water.”

When he watches manure or fertilizer being spread on nearby fields, he said, one question nags him: “Where does that go?”

What cleaner corn could look like

Reducing corn’s climate footprint is possible — but the farmers trying to do it are swimming against the policy tide.

The One Big Beautiful Bill Act, backed by President Donald Trump and congressional Republicans, strips out the provisions of President Joe Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act that had rewarded farmers for climate-friendly practices.

And in April, Trump’s USDA canceled the $3 billion Partnerships for Climate-Smart Commodities initiative, a grant program designed to promote farming and forestry practices to improve soil and reduce greenhouse gas emissions. The agency said that the program’s administrative costs meant too little money was reaching farmers, while Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins dismissed it as part of the “green new scam.” 

University of Iowa professor Silvia Secchi said the rollback of the Climate-Smart program has already given farmers “cold feet” about adopting conservation practices. “The impact of this has been devastating,” said Secchi, a natural resources economist who teaches at the university’s School of Earth, Environment and Sustainability.

Research shows what’s possible if farmers had support. In its recent report, the Environmental Working Group found that four proven conservation practices — including planting trees, shrubs and hedgerows in corn fields — could make a measurable difference. 

Implementing those practices on just 4% of continuous corn acres across Illinois, Iowa, Minnesota and Wisconsin would cut total greenhouse gas emissions by the equivalent of taking more than 850,000 gasoline cars off the road, EWG found.

Despite setbacks at the federal level, some farmers are already showing what a more climate-friendly Corn Belt could look like.

In northern Iowa, Wendy Johnson farms 1,200 acres of corn and soybeans with her father. On 130 of those acres, she’s trying something different: She’s planting fruit and nut trees, organic grains, shrubs and other plants that need little or no nitrogen fertilizer. 

“The more perennials we can have on the ground, the better it is for the climate,” she said. 

Across the rest of the farm, they enrich the soil by rotating crops and planting cover crops. They’ve also converted less productive parts of the fields into “prairie strips” — bands of prairie grass that store carbon and require no fertilizer. 

Under the now-canceled Climate-Smart grant program, they were supposed to receive technical assistance and about $20,000 a year to expand those practices. The grant program was terminated before they got any of the money.

“It’s hard to take risks on your own,” Johnson said. “That’s where federal support really helps. Because agriculture is a high-risk occupation.”

The economics still favor business as usual. Johnson knows that many Midwestern corn growers feel pressure to maximize yields, keeping them hooked on corn — and nitrogen fertilizer. 

“I think a lot of farmers around here are very allergic to trees,” she joked. 

In southeast Iowa, sixth-generation farmer Levi Lyle, who mixes organic and conventional methods across 290 acres, uses a three-year rotation, extensive cover crops and a technique called roller-crimping — flattening rye each spring to create a mulch that suppresses weeds, feeds the soil and reduces fertilizer needs. 

“The roller crimping of cover crops is a huge, huge opportunity to sequester more carbon, improve soil health, save money on chemicals and still get a similar yield,” he said.

But farmers get few government incentives to take such climate-friendly steps, Lyle said. “There is a lack of seriousness about supporting farmers to implement these new practices,” he said. 

And without federal programs to offset the risk, the innovations that Lyle and Johnson are trying remain exceptions — not the norm.

Many farmers still see prairie strips or patches of trees as a waste, said Luke Gran, whose company helps Iowa farmers establish perennials.

“My eyes do not lie,” Gran said. “I have not seen extensive change to cover cropping or tillage across the broad acreage of this state that I love.”

The next corn boom?

Despite mounting research about corn’s climate costs, industry groups are pushing for policies to boost ethanol demand. 

One big priority: pushing a bill to require that new cars are able to run on gas with more ethanol than what’s commonly sold today.

Corn and biofuel trade groups have also been pressing Democrats and Republicans in Congress for legislation to pave the way for ethanol-based jet fuel. While use of such “sustainable” aviation fuel is still in its early stages domestically, corn and biofuel associations have made developing a market for it a top policy priority. 

Secchi, the Iowa professor, says it’s easy to see why ethanol producers are trying to expand their market: The growth in electric vehicles threatens long-term gasoline sales.

Researchers warn that producing enough ethanol-based jet fuel could trigger major land use shifts. A 2024 World Resources Institute analysis found that meeting the federal goal of 35 billion gallons of ethanol jet fuel would require about 114 million acres of corn — roughly 20% more corn acreage than the U.S. already plants for all purposes. That surge in demand, the authors concluded, would push up food prices and worsen hunger.

Secchi calls that scenario a climate and land use “disaster.” Large-scale use of ethanol-based aviation fuel, she said, would mean clearing even more land and pouring on even more nitrogen fertilizer, driving up greenhouse gas emissions. 

“The result,” she said, “would be essentially to enshrine this dysfunctional system that we created.”

This story is from Floodlight, a nonprofit newsroom that investigates the powers stalling climate action. Sign up for Floodlight’s newsletter here.

Corn’s clean energy promise is clashing with its climate footprint is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.

President George W. Bush holds an ear of corn during a 2004 campaign stop at a farmer’s market in Davenport, Iowa. America’s corn industry has become a political force, courted by presidential hopefuls and protected by both parties. Corn production has surged in recent decades. But the fertilizer used to grow it is warming the planet and contaminating water, researchers have found. (Tim Sloan / AFP via Getty Images)

This story is from Floodlight, a nonprofit newsroom that investigates the powers stalling climate action. Sign up for Floodlight’s newsletter here. 

For decades, corn has reigned over American agriculture. It sprawls across 90 million acres — about the size of Montana — and goes into everything from livestock feed and processed foods to the ethanol blended into most of the nation’s gasoline. 

But a growing body of research reveals that America’s obsession with corn has a steep price: The fertilizer used to grow it is warming the planet and contaminating water.

Corn is essential to the rural economy and to the world’s food supply, and researchers say the problem isn’t the corn itself. It’s how we grow it. 

Corn farmers rely on heavy fertilizer use to sustain today’s high yields. And when that nitrogen breaks down in the soil, it releases nitrous oxide, a greenhouse gas nearly 300 times more potent than carbon dioxide. Producing nitrogen fertilizer also emits large amounts of carbon dioxide, adding to its climate footprint.

Agriculture accounts for more than 10% of U.S. greenhouse gas emissions, and corn uses more than two-thirds of all nitrogen fertilizer nationwide — making it the leading driver of agricultural nitrous oxide emissions, studies show.

The corn and ethanol industries insist that rapid growth in ethanol — which now consumes more than 40% of the U.S. corn crop —  is a net environmental benefit, and they strongly dispute research suggesting otherwise.

Since 2000, U.S. corn production has surged almost 50%, further adding to the crop’s climate impact. 

Yet the environmental costs of corn rarely make headlines or factor into political debates. Much of the dynamic traces back to federal policy — and to the powerful corn and ethanol lobby that helped shape it. 

The Renewable Fuel Standard, passed in the mid 2000s, required that gasoline be blended with ethanol, a biofuel that in the United States comes almost entirely from corn. That mandate drove up demand and prices for corn, spurring farmers to plant more of it. 

Many plant corn year after year on the same land. The practice, called “continuous corn,” demands massive amounts of nitrogen fertilizer and drives especially high nitrous oxide emissions. 

At the same time, federal subsidies make it more lucrative to grow corn than to diversify. Taxpayers have covered more than $50 billion in corn insurance premiums over the past 30 years, according to federal data compiled by the Environmental Working Group.

Researchers say proven conservation steps — such as planting rows of trees, shrubs and grasses in corn fields — could sharply reduce these emissions. But the Trump administration has eliminated many of the incentives that helped farmers try such practices. 

Experts say it all raises a larger question: If America’s most widely planted crop is worsening climate change, shouldn’t we begin growing it a different way?

How corn took over America

Corn has been a staple of U.S. agriculture for centuries, first domesticated by Native Americans and later used by European immigrants as a versatile crop for food and animal feed. Its production really took off in the 2000s after federal mandates and incentives helped turn much of America’s corn crop into ethanol.

Corn’s dominance — and the emissions that come with it — didn’t happen by accident. It was built through a high-dollar lobbying campaign that continues today.

In the late 1990s, America’s corn farmers were in trouble. Prices had cratered amid a global grain glut and the Asian financial crisis. A 1999 report by the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis said crop prices had hit “rock bottom.”

In 2001 and 2002, the federal government gave corn farmers and ethanol producers a boost — first through the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Bioenergy Program, which paid ethanol producers to increase their use of farm commodities for fuel. Then the 2002 Farm Bill created programs that continue to support ethanol and other renewable energy.

Corn growers soon after mounted an all-out campaign in Washington. Their goal: persuade Congress to require gasoline to be blended with ethanol. State and national grower groups lobbied relentlessly, pitching ethanol as a way to cut greenhouse gasses, reduce oil dependence and revive rural economies.

“We got down to a couple of votes in Congress, and the corn growers were united like never before,” recalled Jon Doggett, then the industry’s chief lobbyist, in an article published by the National Corn Growers Association. “I started receiving calls from Capitol Hill saying, ‘Would you have your growers stop calling us? We are with you.’ I had not seen anything like it before and haven’t seen anything like it since.”

Their persistence paid off. In 2005, Congress created the Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS), which requires that a certain amount of ethanol be blended into U.S. gasoline each year. Two years later, lawmakers expanded it further. The policy transformed the market: The amount of corn used for ethanol domestically has more than tripled in the past 20 years.

When demand for corn spiked as a result of the RFS, it pushed up prices worldwide, said Tim Searchinger, a researcher at Princeton University’s School of Public and International Affairs. The result, Searchinger said, is that more land around the world got cleared to grow corn. That, in turn, resulted in more emissions. 

That lobbying brought clout. “King Corn” became a political force, courted by presidential hopefuls and protected by both parties. Since 2010, national corn and ethanol trade groups have spent more than $55 million on lobbying and millions more on political donations, according to campaign finance records analyzed by Floodlight. 

In 2024 alone, those trade groups spent twice as much on lobbying as the National Rifle Association. Major industry players — Archer Daniels Midland, Cargill and ethanol giant POET among them — have poured even more into Washington, ensuring the sector’s voice remains one of the loudest in U.S. agriculture.

Now those same groups are pushing for the next big prize: expanding higher-ethanol gasoline blends and positioning ethanol-based jet fuel as aviation’s “low-carbon” future.

Research undercuts ethanol’s clean-fuel claims

Corn and ethanol trade groups didn’t make their officials available for interviews.

But on their websites and in their literature, they have promoted corn ethanol as a climate-friendly fuel. 

The Renewable Fuels Association cites government and university research that finds burning ethanol reduces greenhouse gas emissions by roughly 40-50% compared with gasoline. The ethanol industry says the climate critics have it wrong — and that most of the corn used for fuel comes from better yields and smarter farming, not from plowing up new land. The amount of fertilizer required to produce a bushel of corn has dropped sharply in recent decades, they say.

“Ethanol reduces carbon emissions, removing the carbon equivalent of 12 million cars from the road each year,” according to the Renewable Fuels Association.

Growth Energy, a major ethanol trade group, said in a written statement that U.S. farmers and biofuel producers are “constantly finding new ways to make their operations more efficient and more environmentally beneficial,” using things like cover crops to reduce their carbon footprint.

But some research tells a different story.

A recent Environmental Working Group report finds that the way corn is grown in much of the Midwest — with the same fields planted in corn year after year — carries a heavy climate cost.

Research in 2022 by agricultural land use expert Tyler Lark and colleagues links the Renewable Fuel Standard to expanded corn cultivation, heavier fertilizer use, worsening water pollution and increased emissions. Scientists typically convert greenhouse gasses like nitrous oxide and methane into their carbon-dioxide equivalents — or carbon intensity — so their warming impacts can be compared on the same scale.

“The carbon intensity of corn ethanol produced under the RFS is no less than gasoline and likely at least 24% higher,” the authors concluded.

Lark’s research has been disputed by scientists at Argonne National Laboratory, Purdue University and the University of Illinois, who published a formal rebuttal arguing the study relied on “questionable assumptions” and faulty modeling — a charge Lark’s team has rejected.

A 2017 report by the U.S. Government Accountability Office found that the RFS was unlikely to meet its greenhouse gas goals because the U.S. relies predominantly on corn ethanol and produces relatively little of the cleaner, advanced biofuels made from waste. 

The problem isn’t just emissions, researchers say. Corn ethanol requires millions of acres that could instead be used for food crops or more efficient energy sources. One recent study found that solar panels can generate as much energy as corn ethanol on roughly 3% of the land. 

“It’s just a terrible use of land,” Searchinger, the Princeton researcher, said of ethanol. “And you can’t solve climate change if you’re going to make such terrible use of land.”

Most of the country’s top crop isn’t feeding people. More than 40% of U.S. corn goes to ethanol. A similar amount is used to feed livestock, and just 12% ends up as food or in other uses.

As corn production rises, so have emissions 

Globally, corn production doubled from 2000 to 2021. 

That growth has been fueled by fertilizer, which emits nitrous oxide that can linger in the atmosphere for more than a century. That eats away at the ozone layer, which blocks most of the sun’s harmful ultraviolet radiation.

Global emissions have soared alongside corn production. Between 1980 and 2020, nitrous oxide emissions from human activity climbed 40%, the Global Carbon project found. 

In the United States, nitrous oxide emissions from agriculture in 2022 were equal to roughly 262 million metric tons of carbon dioxide, according to the EPA’s inventory of greenhouse gas emissions. That’s equivalent to putting almost 56 million passenger cars on the road.

The biggest increases are coming straight from the Corn Belt.

Ethanol’s climate footprint isn’t the only concern. The nitrogen used to grow corn and other crops is also a key source of drinking water pollution.

According to a new report by the Alliance for the Great Lakes and Clean Wisconsin, more than 90% of nitrate contamination in Wisconsin’s groundwater is linked to agricultural sources — mostly synthetic fertilizer and manure. 

The same analysis estimates that in 2022, farmers applied more than 16 million pounds of nitrogen beyond what crops needed, sending runoff into wells, streams and other water systems.

For families like Tyler Frye’s, that hits close to home. In 2022, Frye and his wife moved into a new home in the rural village of Casco, Wisconsin, about 20 miles east of Green Bay. A free test soon afterward found their well water had nitrate levels more than twice the EPA’s safe limit. “We were pretty shocked,” he said. 

Frye installed a reverse-osmosis system in the basement and still buys bottled water for his wife, who is breastfeeding their daughter, born in July.

One likely culprit, he suspects, are the cornfields less than 200 yards from his home.

“Crops like corn require a lot of nitrogen,” he said. “A lot of that stuff, I assume, is getting into the well water and surface water.”

When he watches manure or fertilizer being spread on nearby fields, he said, one question nags him: “Where does that go?”

What cleaner corn could look like

Reducing corn’s climate footprint is possible — but the farmers trying to do it are swimming against the policy tide.

The One Big Beautiful Bill Act, backed by President Donald Trump and congressional Republicans, strips out the provisions of President Joe Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act that had rewarded farmers for climate-friendly practices.

And in April, Trump’s USDA canceled the $3 billion Partnerships for Climate-Smart Commodities initiative, a grant program designed to promote farming and forestry practices to improve soil and reduce greenhouse gas emissions. The agency said that the program’s administrative costs meant too little money was reaching farmers, while Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins dismissed it as part of the “green new scam.” 

University of Iowa professor Silvia Secchi said the rollback of the Climate-Smart program has already given farmers “cold feet” about adopting conservation practices. “The impact of this has been devastating,” said Secchi, a natural resources economist who teaches at the university’s School of Earth, Environment and Sustainability.

Research shows what’s possible if farmers had support. In its recent report, the Environmental Working Group found that four proven conservation practices — including planting trees, shrubs and hedgerows in corn fields — could make a measurable difference. 

Implementing those practices on just 4% of continuous corn acres across Illinois, Iowa, Minnesota and Wisconsin would cut total greenhouse gas emissions by the equivalent of taking more than 850,000 gasoline cars off the road, EWG found.

Despite setbacks at the federal level, some farmers are already showing what a more climate-friendly Corn Belt could look like.

In northern Iowa, Wendy Johnson farms 1,200 acres of corn and soybeans with her father. On 130 of those acres, she’s trying something different: She’s planting fruit and nut trees, organic grains, shrubs and other plants that need little or no nitrogen fertilizer.

“The more perennials we can have on the ground, the better it is for the climate,” she said.

Across the rest of the farm, they enrich the soil by rotating crops and planting cover crops. They’ve also converted less productive parts of the fields into “prairie strips” — bands of prairie grass that store carbon and require no fertilizer.

Under the now-cancelled Climate-Smart grant program, they were supposed to receive technical assistance and about $20,000 a year to expand those practices. The grant program was terminated before they got any of the money.

“It’s hard to take risks on your own,” Johnson said. “That’s where federal support really helps. Because agriculture is a high-risk occupation.”

The economics still favor business as usual. Johnson knows that many Midwestern corn growers feel pressure to maximize yields, keeping them hooked on corn — and nitrogen fertilizer. 

“I think a lot of farmers around here are very allergic to trees,” she joked. 

In southeast Iowa, sixth-generation farmer Levi Lyle, who mixes organic and conventional methods across 290 acres, uses a three-year rotation, extensive cover crops and a technique called roller-crimping — flattening rye each spring to create a mulch that suppresses weeds, feeds the soil and reduces fertilizer needs. 

“The roller crimping of cover crops is a huge, huge opportunity to sequester more carbon, improve soil health, save money on chemicals and still get a similar yield,” he said.

But farmers get few government incentives to take such climate-friendly steps, Lyle said. “There is a lack of seriousness about supporting farmers to implement these new practices,” he said. 

And without federal programs to offset the risk, the innovations that Lyle and Johnson are trying remain exceptions — not the norm.

Many farmers still see prairie strips or patches of trees as a waste, said Luke Gran, whose company helps Iowa farmers establish perennials.

“My eyes do not lie,” Gran said. “I have not seen extensive change to cover cropping or tillage across the broad acreage of this state that I love.”

The next corn boom?

Despite mounting research about corn’s climate costs, industry groups are pushing for policies to  boost ethanol demand. 

One big priority: Pushing a bill to require that new cars are able to run on gas with more ethanol than what’s commonly sold today.

Corn and biofuel trade groups have also been pressing Democrats and Republicans in Congress for legislation to pave the way for ethanol-based jet fuel. While use of such “sustainable” aviation fuel is still in its early stages domestically, corn and biofuel associations have made developing a market for it a top policy priority. 

Secchi, the Iowa professor, says it’s easy to see why ethanol producers are trying to expand their market: The growth in electric vehicles threatens long-term gasoline sales.

Researchers warn that producing enough ethanol-based jet fuel could trigger major land-use shifts. A 2024 World Resources Institute analysis found that meeting the federal goal of 35 billion gallons of ethanol jet fuel would require about 114 million acres of corn — roughly 20% more corn acreage than the U.S. already plants for all purposes. That surge in demand, the authors concluded, would push up food prices and worsen hunger.

Secchi calls that scenario a climate and land-use “disaster.” Large-scale use of ethanol-based aviation fuel, she said, would mean clearing even more land and pouring on even more nitrogen fertilizer, driving up greenhouse gas emissions. 

“The result,” she said, “would be essentially to enshrine this dysfunctional system that we created.”

Floodlight is a nonprofit newsroom that investigates the powers stalling climate action. 

On July 8th, Cleantech Group delivered a webinar, Clarity Through Chaos, revisiting the predictions we made at the beginning of the year regarding...

The post One Big Beautiful Bill, 3 Sets of Bold Predictions: Our H2 2025 Outlook appeared first on Cleantech Group.

2024 was a standout year for fusion with multiple companies and technology types raising funds. As concerns around meeting the energy demands for...

The post Diversifying Approaches to Achieve Fusion: How Growing Demands for Energy Are Encouraging Investors to Back a Broad Variety of Fusion Systems appeared first on Cleantech Group.

Mark Fleming has a prediction for those terrified about the impact of a second Trump administration on the clean energy transition: “It’s going to work out better than folks think.”

Fleming is head of Conservatives for Clean Energy, a Raleigh-based nonprofit that brings together lobbyists, consultants, and politicians on the right who support clean energy. The group formed a decade ago, not long before Trump’s first term began, and is now active in six Southeast states. On Tuesday, together with the Chambers for Innovation and Clean Energy, it held its biennial luncheon in downtown Raleigh. 

Coming just two weeks after an election most advocates see as a major setback for federal clean energy policy, the Raleigh event was not unlike past affairs, with congenial vibes, a half dozen awards to politicians and businesses, and presentation from leading Republican consultants assessing the political salience of clean energy.

“It was an election about the economy and immigration,” explained Paul Shumaker, one such pollster and a fixture at these gatherings. “Clean energy is never going to be the issue.”

Trump and his hostile, mostly fact-free rants on the campaign trail about wind energy and the climate crisis got little mention during the formal presentations. Side conversations showed conservatives seemed relatively unconcerned about the future president’s tirades and threats.

“Governing is different than campaigning,” Fleming said. 

He and others believe much of Trump’s rhetoric was tossed as red meat to his base of supporters and won’t get meaningful follow-through. On technologies such as offshore wind — which the incoming president frequently lambasts — perhaps the administration and even the man himself can be convinced of its economic benefits, attendees suggested. 

Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin, a Republican who supports offshore wind in the commonwealth, “will be at the top of the list of conservative policy makers in terms of encouraging the Trump administration to look at the positives on offshore wind,” Fleming said. “It makes long term economic sense, but there’s going to be some education there.”

Indeed, to help his re-election chances, Trump did flip his stance on offshore drilling four years ago — at least for the Southern Atlantic — after input from Republicans in Southeast states who oppose the practice.

Despite Trump’s vague promise to curtail the Inflation Reduction Act, Fleming believes congressional Republicans will preserve most of Biden’s signature climate law because of its benefits in rural areas.

Nine new projects announced in North Carolina the year after the measure’s passage, from lithium processing to vehicle-charging equipment plants, will spur tens of thousands of jobs and add $10 billion to the state’s GDP, the clean economy group E2 found.

Such data should be fodder for members of Congress like Sen. Thom Tillis, North Carolina’s senior U.S. senator and a Republican, to fight to keep most of the Inflation Reduction Act’s provisions.

“He has been such a thoughtful leader on energy issues,” Fleming said of Tillis. “He’s going to be a key decision maker in the U.S. Senate on these clean energy issues moving forward.” 

‘We won’t agree on everything’ 

Jason Saine, a Lincoln County Republican who served more than a dozen years in the North Carolina House and now works as a lobbyist, was among the luncheon’s awardees. He says Trump’s rhetoric is just part of politics. 

“Good science and good facts will rule the day, but in the meantime, we’ll suffer through a lot of rhetoric,” he said.

Like some of his conservative colleagues who focus on federal policy, Fleming hopes the closely divided Congress will have new reason to enact reforms to the permitting process that will speed approval of clean energy as well as fossil fuel projects.

And though he’s confident that much of the Inflation Reduction Act will survive, Fleming believes Congress will trim it — a “scalpel rather than a sledgehammer” approach. 

Saine agrees. “It can always be recreated in a different format and voted on again,” he said. “What’s dead today is never dead tomorrow.”

One item in the climate law that’s ripe for repeal is the $7,500 tax credit for electric vehicles, Fleming said. That incentive is spurring plenty of economic development in rural areas in the form of EV and battery factories, but it’s perceived as benefiting only urban folk. 

“The administration will want wins,” Fleming insisted. “We won’t agree on everything. But I think we’ll have opportunities to work together to move the economy forward and move the clean energy cause forward in D.C.”

No matter what, most of the luncheon attendees remained focused on incremental reforms in North Carolina — where the power dynamics are largely unchanged after Nov. 5. Trump won the state, but Democrat Josh Stein trounced a scandal-plagued Republican to win the governor’s race. The GOP continues to control a heavily gerrymandered legislature and is just one vote shy of a veto-proof majority in the House. 

Still, as “Trump II” approaches, Fleming acknowledged Conservatives for Clean Energy has an important role to play.

“It’s going to be better than folks think,” he repeated. “But the onus will be on all of us to make it happen. Now, groups like ours are more needed than ever. That thought leadership on these issues will be on the right. It’s not going to be from our friends on the left.”

In North Carolina, conservative clean energy supporters don’t think Trump will follow through on threats is an article from Energy News Network, a nonprofit news service covering the clean energy transition. If you would like to support us please make a donation.

A successful regional collaboration to secure federal Inflation Reduction Act money in northeast Ohio has inspired a new, ongoing effort to help cities, counties, utilities and community groups coordinate on clean energy.

Three Cleveland-area foundations last month announced the launch of Power Up Local, which aims to play both a matchmaker and wedding planner role on large-scale, regional clean energy developments. The initiative plans to help connect potential partners, maximize projects’ community benefits, and facilitate joint funding opportunities such as federal grants, tax incentives, or green bank loans.

“This is really looking for the larger, more ambitious stakeholder projects that have direct stakeholder benefits,” said Daniel Gray, Power Up Local’s executive director. A big emphasis will be on assembling groups who “might not have worked with each other originally or understood where there’s an overlap” between clean energy and other goals.

The initiative could offer a new path for local leaders to advance in a place where state government remains hostile to clean energy. The continued availability of federal funding is in question following former President Donald Trump’s reelection, but Gray and others said they are confident some form of federal support for clean energy will remain during his second term.

The idea for Power Up Local grew out of collaboration among Cuyahoga County, the cities of Cleveland and Painesville, and other organizations on a $129 million grant application under the federal Climate Pollution Reduction Grant program. The application was among those awarded funding in July. It includes money for closing a coal plant and building multiple solar arrays, including on four closed landfills.

Beyond reducing pollution, the project will help lower electricity costs and generate revenue. Some of that will in turn aid in conservation efforts for the West Creek Conservancy, including lakeside access for residents in Lake County. Gray did some work on the project as director of local strategies for the Citizens Utility Board of Ohio, and local philanthropic support also helped in assembling the grant application.

The Cleveland Foundation, George Gund Foundation and the Fund for Our Economic Future are providing initial funding for Power Up Local. Initially, the program’s three full-time employees are being housed under Fund for Our Economic Future, with a goal of spinning it out as an independent nonprofit by 2027. 

The George Gund Foundation also provides funding to the Energy News Network. Like other donors, it has no oversight or input into the editorial process and may not influence stories.

Gray said Power Up Local will help stakeholders think bigger and more broadly about projects. For example, a project to redevelop a former industrial site may be able to help bring in other properties from a land bank or other group, potentially expanding into an economic redevelopment district that might support a microgrid, he suggested.

“We can add efficiency to projects, both financially and timewise,” Gray said.

Power Up Local will be a resource for organizations that want to add clean energy to a project but may not have the time or bandwidth to figure out how to do it. “They don’t necessarily know how to engage the marketplace,” Gray said.

And when it comes to funding, competitive grants will just be part of the story. A range of other credits or incentives can also help bring more clean energy. That raised a question, said Stephen Love, program director for environmental initiatives at the Cleveland Foundation: “What would it look like at scale beyond just the competitive grants to really unlock the whole scale of federal resources?”

While Power Up Local will work on clean energy projects, those projects must still be “net-neutral or revenue-positive” in order to promote economic development, Gray said. “We’re looking to develop as much community benefit as possible.”

Those benefits can come from lower electricity rates for people with high energy burdens, health benefits from lower pollution, job opportunities, conservation, access to parks, redevelopment of properties to attract businesses, and so on.

“This is about economic development. This is about creating economic opportunity in our communities,” said Love. As he sees it, clean energy can help drive that development.

Uncertainties ahead

No one knows what Trump’s presidential victory will mean for federal clean energy funding, but advocates are confident some funding will still be available.

“There are still grants to go after, and will likely still be grants to go after in the future,” Gray said. A repeal of the Inflation Reduction Act and Bipartisan Infrastructure Law would take time, and much of the grant funding has flowed to districts that supported Trump in 2020.

Even if agencies under Trump stopped carrying out the law, “I don’t think the bulk of the IRA direct credits are going to go away,” Gray said. He noted that Rep. Dave Joyce (R-Bainbridge Township) is among 18 members of Congress who wrote to House Speaker Mike Johnson this summer to support continuation of the energy tax credits.

Atlas Public Policy’s Climate Portal Program estimates those tax credits could exceed a quarter of a trillion dollars, with nearly another $250 billion of potential credits under the 2021 Bipartisan Infrastructure Law. Those credits can serve as refunds for nonprofits and local governments, which is how sewage treatment authorities in Columbus and Cincinnati plan to offset big chunks of the costs for biogas plants at two of their wastewater treatment facilities.

Financing opportunities will also be available from green banks, Gray said. Commercial banks also are looking to expand their portfolios for financing clean energy projects as part of corporate sustainability goals, he noted.

Power A Clean Future Ohio has already been working for several years to help its 50 local government members find ways to cut greenhouse gas emissions, based on their individual interests and priorities. Executive Director Joe Flarida said Power Up Local’s work will be a welcome complement to its ongoing work. 

“It just underscores the huge needs we have in the state of Ohio to invest locally and ensure that our local leaders and local governments have all the resources they need to do this work efficiently,” he said.

In Flarida’s view, an anti-climate approach by the incoming Trump administration “is also an anti-jobs approach.” And even if the federal government no longer treats climate change as a key priority, “that doesn’t change the reality that this is an issue we have to address head on,” he said.

Gray encourages local governments and other organizations with ideas for projects to reach out in the coming weeks and months.

“Now is the time to start thinking about what might be possible,” he said.

Ohio program wants to play matchmaker and wedding planner for clean energy collaborations is an article from Energy News Network, a nonprofit news service covering the clean energy transition. If you would like to support us please make a donation.

The Biden administration has enacted the most consequential federal clean energy and climate policy in U.S. history, giving the nation a fighting chance at reducing greenhouse gas emissions fast enough to deal with the climate crisis. Former President Donald Trump, who has won the 2024 presidential election, has pledged to undo that work.

Though Trump’s executive powers will allow him to slow the energy transition in a number of ways, the extent to which he rolls back Biden’s clean energy accomplishments will be dictated in part by whether Republicans retain control of the House of Representatives. The GOP flipped the U.S. Senate, but votes are still being counted in key House races as of Wednesday morning.

Here’s what clean energy and climate experts say is most likely to be lost under a second Trump administration — and what might survive.

What Trump has said about energy

Trump’s rhetoric presages a worst-case future. He has called climate change a hoax and the Biden administration’s climate policies a ​“green new scam.” He has said he wants to repeal the landmark Inflation Reduction Act and halt the law’s hundreds of billions of dollars of tax credits, grants, and other federal incentives for clean energy, electric vehicles, and other low-carbon technologies.

Trump has also made ​“drill, baby, drill” a call-and-response line at his rallies, pledging to undo any restraints on production and use of the fossil fuels driving climate change. U.S. oil and gas production is already at a record high under the Biden administration.

“He has pledged to do the bidding for Big Oil on day one,” Andrew Reagan, executive director of Clean Energy for America, said during a recent webinar.

“Oil and gas lobbyists are drafting executive orders for him to sign on day one,” Reagan added, citing news reports of plans from oil industry groups to roll back key Biden administration regulations and executive orders.

A Trump administration would be all but certain to reverse key Environmental Protection Agency regulations limiting greenhouse gas emissions from power plants, light-duty and heavy-duty vehicles, and the oil and gas industry, all of which analysts say are necessary to meet the country’s climate commitments. It’s also almost sure to lift the Biden administration’s pause on federal permitting of fossil-gas export facilities.

Trump has also promised to withdraw the U.S. from international climate agreements (again), including the Paris agreement aimed at limiting global warming to no more than 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels.

“We know that Trump would take us out of the Paris agreement, and that would be the last time his administration uttered the word ​‘climate,’” Catherine Wolfram, an economist at the MIT Sloan School of Management and former deputy assistant secretary for climate and energy economics in the Biden administration’s Treasury Department, told Canary Media. ​“Losing that global leadership would be one of the greatest losses of a Trump presidency.”

What will happen to the Inflation Reduction Act? 

Trump won’t have the power to enact all of his promises on his own. Some of the decisions must be made by Congress, including any effort to repeal the Inflation Reduction Act or to claw back unspent funds from that law or the 2021 bipartisan infrastructure law.

Complete repeal of the Inflation Reduction Act would be highly disruptive to a clean energy sector that has seen planned investment grow to roughly $500 billion since the law was passed in mid-2022.

It would also undermine clean energy job growth, which has increased at roughly twice the pace of U.S. employment overall. A recent survey of clean energy companies found that a repeal of the law would be expected to lead to half of them losing business or revenue, roughly one-quarter losing projects or contracts, about one-fifth laying off workers, and about one in 10 going out of business. 

“We found that especially rural areas and smaller rural communities would experience the largest negative impacts of repeal of the Inflation Reduction Act,” Shara Mohtadi, co-founder of S2 Strategies, said in an October webinar presenting the survey data. ​“These are the regions of the country that have seen the biggest uptake in the economic benefits and the manufacturing jobs coming from other countries into the United States.”

Indeed, most of the investment and job growth the IRA has spurred has taken place in states and congressional districts represented by Republicans.

These on-the-ground realities have driven expectations that large swaths of the law’s tax credits would be likely to survive even with Republican control of the White House and both houses of Congress. Trump would face pushback within his own party to undoing the law entirely.

In an August letter to current Speaker of the House Mike Johnson (R-Louisiana), 18 House Republicans warned against repealing the clean energy and manufacturing tax credits created by the Inflation Reduction Act, which have ​“spurred innovation, incentivized investment, and created good jobs in many parts of the country — including many districts represented by members of our conference.”

“Prematurely repealing energy tax credits, particularly those which were used to justify investments that already broke ground, would undermine private investments and stop development that is already ongoing,” the 18 House Republicans wrote. ​“A full repeal would create a worst-case scenario where we would have spent billions of taxpayer dollars and received next to nothing in return.”

Republicans would need a roughly 20-seat majority to overcome opposition from these party members opposed to a full repeal, said Harry Godfrey, head of the federal investment and manufacturing working group of trade group Advanced Energy United.

“I don’t envision Republicans holding the House with 20-plus seats,” he said.

Godfrey also doubted that a Trump administration would be eager to undermine the domestic manufacturing boom that the law’s tax credits have spurred. He noted that at the October 1 vice-presidential debate, J.D. Vance, the Republican Ohio senator and Trump’s running mate, emphasized the need for the U.S. to ​“consolidate American dominance” in key energy sectors and industries now dominated by China.

While Vance went on to falsely accuse the Biden administration of failing to bolster U.S. industries against China, the goal of emphasizing domestic competitiveness could lead Republicans to avoid undermining progress in that direction, he suggested.

How Trump’s second term could derail the clean energy transition is an article from Energy News Network, a nonprofit news service covering the clean energy transition. If you would like to support us please make a donation.

The following commentary was written by Mel Mackinm, director of state policy at Ceres, a nonprofit that works with investors and companies to advance clean energy policy. See our commentary guidelines for more information.

---

Look out across Michigan and you’ll see groundbreakings for major solar panel manufacturing sites, huge investments to build battery cells, and sparkling new facilities to ensure the state stays in the driver’s seat as the auto industry moves into the future.

It seems Michigan manufacturing is having a moment.

It’s little wonder why. Michigan has always had the legacy, the workforce, the supply chains, and the know-how to serve as the epicenter of an American manufacturing renaissance. That’s exactly what’s happened since Congress finalized the nation’s largest-ever clean energy investment in the summer of 2022.

Powered by incentives for companies to manufacture and deploy clean energy infrastructure and technology here in the U.S., the Inflation Reduction Act has unlocked more than $360 billion in private-sector investment in less than two years, according to research from Climate Power. Its impact has been felt in every corner of the country with hundreds of new projects taking shape to build innovative technologies, employ hundreds of thousands of workers, and power the economy – all while cutting costs and pollution. But no other state has seen as much activity as Michigan, the site of 58 new clean energy projects.

Michigan policymakers deserve some credit for moving quickly to take full advantage of this opportunity. In 2022, Gov. Gretchen Whitmer made clear in her MI Healthy Climate Plan that she wanted to make Michigan one of the best places in the world to build and deploy clean energy. Lawmakers since followed her lead with legislation that will move the state to 100% clean electricity by 2040 and ensure clean power infrastructure can be built both quickly and responsibly – a pair of laws that boasted ample support from Michigan companies that recognize confronting climate change is also an economic opportunity.

These policies were designed to fully harness the Inflation Reduction Act, making clear that the state is ready to support the growing number of businesses that supply or rely on innovative clean technology. In response, businesses that include classic Michigan manufacturers like GM, global brands like Corning, and upstarts like Lucid Motors have flooded the state with more than $21.5 billion in new clean energy innovation and manufacturing investment, creating some 20,100 new jobs.

With projects located from Detroit to Holland to Traverse City, so much of the state is already benefitting. That includes communities that have so far been left behind in the 21st century economy. About half of the state’s recent clean energy investment is located in rural or low-income areas, such as Norm Fasteners’ $77 million facility that will create 200 electric vehicle supply chain jobs in Bath Charter Township.

Now is not the time to slow down. We are now in the throes of the 2024 election, and we all know Michigan has been getting a lot of attention. No matter what happens in November, Michigan and the U.S. must continue investing in this revamped manufacturing base. Policymakers on both sides of the aisle have prioritized rebuilding American industry to provide good jobs and bolster U.S. leadership

Michigan’s clean energy manufacturing boom provides clear evidence that this shared goal is coming to fruition. Policymakers at both the federal and state levels, along with leaders in the private sector, must maintain this momentum and the strong policy environment that will allow the U.S. and its workforce to lead the global economy in the emerging industries of the future – with Michigan, as it so often has, standing strong as the foundation.

Commentary: Michigan is the epicenter of America’s clean energy manufacturing renaissance is an article from Energy News Network, a nonprofit news service covering the clean energy transition. If you would like to support us please make a donation.

The beginning of construction activities on the NatriumTM demonstration project site marks the first advanced nuclear reactor project under construction in the Western Hemisphere. BELLEVUE, Washington – June 10, 2024 – TerraPower, a leading nuclear innovation company, today celebrated the start of construction on the Natrium reactor1 demonstration project. This marks the first advanced reactor …

The post TerraPower Begins Construction on Advanced Nuclear Project in Wyoming appeared first on Alternative Energy HQ.