Despite the sabotage and slow-downs, solar keeps surging in America!
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Reasons For Hope
In California, fast-growing solar power generated more electricity than fossil gas in the five months of January-May 2026! (And that’s on the grid, not even counting rooftop solar). California’s 25 GW of solar capacity generated more power than its 29 GW of expensive fossil gas capacity on 82% of days in that period, up from just 21% in 2024. California gas generation fell by 60% in just two years as burning the expensive fuel is fast becoming uneconomic. Fossil fuels, not renewables, are underperforming their nameplate capacity these days.
California’s fast-growing 16 GW of grid-scale batteries (including Tumbleweed, America’s first eight-hour grid-scale battery!) is extending solar power’s reach deep into the night. Wind power imports from New Mexico via the new SunZia power line are now also directly outcompeting gas at night! On many days in recent months, there’s been hardly any fossil fuels being burned for the Golden State at all.
And, of course, May 2026 saw both the first-ever month where solar generated more power than coal across America and the final steps of the Qcells factory expansion in Georgia that has more than doubled U.S. solar cell manufacturing capacity!
Renewables directly replacing fossil fuels isn’t the future anymore. It’s the present.
America’s renewable progress is great, but there’s lots of room to go much further and much faster, especially as we need more power to electrify transport and heating in addition to the existing grid.
Gigawatts of U.S. clean power projects are being delayed and canceled due to a combination of a byzantine lawsuit-hackable permitting process and active sabotage from an openly hostile White House. China built 315 GW of new solar power and 119 GW of new wind power in 2025, again breaking their own record, while the U.S. is set to build 86 GW of new power from all sources combined in 2026. China’s total solar capacity alone is now larger than the entire U.S. grid capacity.
Recently, four Republican members of the U.S. House of Representatives introduced the American Energy Dominance Act to extend the 45Y production tax credit and 48E investment tax credit for clean energy, partially repealing some of the 2025 White House budget’s damage. Congress must pass this bill, and also the vital permitting-focused FREEDOM Act to cut away the red tape being weaponized by the White House to block clean power build-outs.
The Solar-Battery Age is here, and ready to deliver unprecedented clean energy abundance as soon as we let it.
Tell Congress to unleash abundant American solar power!
Your Dose of Climate Hope is written by Sam Matey-Coste for Climate Action Now.