Climate 411

How the Trump administration is obstructing clean energy – and why it raises your costs

By Ted Kelly / Published: July 31, 2025

A black and white photograph of solar and wind projects is being torn in half to reveal a coal plant overlaid with an upward trend line to reflect rising costs.

Last updated August 4, 2025.

Electricity prices are rising across the U.S. Demand for electricity is going up for the first time in 20 years. And more extreme weather and heat waves are causing blackouts.

Yet instead of expanding access to low-cost, reliable clean power, the Trump administration is making the problem worse. Since Day One, the administration and its allies in Congress have pushed policies that restrict the supply of affordable, homegrown clean energy – creating a self-inflicted rate hike just as the country needs more power.

Wind and solar offer some of the cheapest – and fastest – ways to provide electric power today. In contrast, the cost to build natural gas plants is at a 10-year high and a shortage of turbines is delaying construction, while coal remains the most expensive and dirtiest way to generate power. To put it simply: Blocking cheap, clean energy while doubling down on outdated fossil fuels makes no economic or environmental sense.

The attacks on clean energy will not only hike up our electricity bills, but they will also unleash more pollution in our water and air, kill thousands of jobs and make our electric grid weaker.

How is this happening? Here are major ways the Trump administration is obstructing clean energy: Read More »

Also posted in Cars and Pollution, Climate Change Legislation, Economics, Energy, Green Jobs, Greenhouse Gas Emissions / Tagged , , , | Authors: / Leave a comment

Detroit Showcases How Clean Energy and Community Benefits Go Hand-in-Hand

By Tonya Calhoun / Published: May 27, 2025

Written Q&A with Tepfirah Rushdan, Director of the Detroit Office of Sustainability, on the city’s solar neighborhoods project.

A white man in a gray suit pointing out details on a posterboard. In the background are four more individuals.

Mayor Mike Duggan and other city officials share information about the selected solar neighborhoods with community members during a January 2025 press conference.

Detroit is modeling how to co-create clean energy solutions with communities by combining urban revitalization efforts with sustainability goals. The Motor City’s climate goals are ambitious: by 2034, Detroit aims to power 100% of its municipal buildings with clean energy and source 50% of its electricity from clean sources in the next three years. Along the way, the city is advancing a range of co-benefits, including improved public health, more energy efficiency and affordability, and quality jobs and opportunities.

As part of this strategy, Detroit‘s Office of Sustainability and Department of Neighborhoods are teaming up to implement the city’s Neighborhood Solar Initiative, which will build solar arrays on vacant land surrounded by communities that benefit from the repurposed space. Five neighborhoods were selected based on resident interest, and a total of 167 acres of land are being fitted with solar fields, raised gardening beds and other landscaping enhancements. Spearheaded by Mayor Mike Duggan and informed by input from thousands of Detroiters, the effort is one of the first steps to achieving the city’s larger climate goals. By providing clean energy and engaging residents and local nonprofits, Solar Neighborhoods will make new use of vacant areas and offer money-saving energy efficiency upgrades for surrounding homes.

A woman with light brown skin and a white shirt smiling at the camera.

Tepfirah Rushdan, Director of the Office of Sustainability since 2024.

I spoke with Tepfirah Rushdan, Detroit’s Director of Sustainability, to learn more about the city’s Solar Neighborhoods, how communities have been involved during every step of the process and her advice for other local leaders looking to build more sustainable futures for their cities. Read More »

Also posted in Cities and states, Green Jobs, Just Transition / Authors: / Comments are closed

Stronger Standards, Better Monitoring Will Protect Communities from Toxic Pollution

By Richard Yates / Published: June 4, 2024

(This post was co-authored by EDF analyst Jolie Villegas)

The Environmental Protection Agency’s recent updates of the Mercury and Air Toxics Standards include several steps that provide substantial public health benefits by reducing toxic air pollution from coal plants.

In our last blog post we wrote about one of those steps – closing the “lignite loophole” that allows power plants that burn lignite coal to avoid commonsense pollution limits that protect people’s health and safety.

There’s a second step that EPA took in updating the Mercury and Air Toxics Standards – requiring coal-fired power plants to use a Continuous Emissions Monitoring System so that people and communities are protected from dangerous pollution 365 days a year.

And as a third step to protect communities from harmful exposures, the updated Mercury and Air Toxics Standards meaningfully strengthen limits for hazardous metal emissions.

Read More »

Also posted in Just Transition, News, Policy / Comments are closed

We need to close a mercury pollution loophole for lignite coal plants

By Jolie Villegas / Published: April 12, 2024

(This post was co-authored by EDF attorney Richard Yates)

The Environmental Protection Agency is soon expected to update our national protections against mercury and other toxic pollution from coal-fired power plants – pollution that is extremely dangerous to human health and has been linked to brain damage in children.

EPA proposed strengthening the Mercury and Air Toxics Standards and closing a loophole for lignite coal and is expected to issue its final update soon. EDF has found that, even as we have made great progress in reducing mercury pollution overall, the lignite coal loophole leaves parts of the U.S. at especially high risk.

Mapping Big Mercury Polluters

[(i) The owner/operator of the Comanche plant in Colorado has announced its intention to retire unit 2 by 2025 and unit 3 by 2030; unit 1 retired in 2022. (ii) The owner/operator of the Sherburne County plant in Minnesota has announced its intention to retire unit 1 by 2025 and unit 3 by 2034; unit 2 retired in 2023. (iii) The owner/operator of the Cardinal plant in Ohio has announced its intention to retire unit 3 by 2028; units 1 and 2 have no scheduled retirement dates. (Data: EPA’s Clean Air Markets Program Data; EIA’s 2022 Form EIA-860 Data – Schedule 3)] 

Two years ago, EDF published a map of the top 30 mercury-polluting power plants in 2020 across the United States. We have now refreshed this map based on data from 2022, and you can see the results above.

Read More »

Also posted in Clean Air Act, Indigenous People, News, Policy / Comments are closed

Auction results and budget decisions emphasize importance of investments from Washington state’s Climate Commitment Act

By Caroline Jones / Published: March 13, 2024

This blog was co-authored by Janet Zamudio, Western States Climate Policy Intern

The last week has been eventful in Washington, seeing the end of legislative session last Thursday and the first quarterly cap-and-invest auction of 2024, which posted results today. With the legislative session wrapped up and budgets passed, we now know what additional spending lawmakers plan to do with the revenue generated by these cap-and-invest auctions thanks to the supplemental budget passed last week. And with the results from the first auction of 2024 now in the books, it seems the Evergreen State will continue to see significant revenue from this program to reinvest in communities, clean energy projects and climate resilience. There’s a lot to unpack, so let’s start with the auction results:

Read More »

Also posted in California, Carbon Markets, Cities and states, Economics, Energy, Greenhouse Gas Emissions, Policy / Comments are closed

Building a greener future: How federal purchasing power can drive a low-carbon cement industry

By Akin Olumoroti / Published: March 7, 2024

This blog was co-authored by Dara Diamond, Federal Climate Innovation Intern

Historic climate investments from the Biden administration have put a much-needed down payment toward cutting emissions from industry — a major economic sector that makes up over a quarter of U.S. emissions. Still, a lot of hard work remains to meaningfully scale up solutions in this sector. A particularly tricky piece of the industrial emissions problem is hidden in plain sight all around us, in our buildings, sidewalks, highways and bridges: cement.

The scale of this climate challenge is colossal. Cement is the most widely used man-made material on the planet. If the cement industry were a country, it would be the third largest emitter in the world.

To slash emissions from cement production, policymakers will need to make the most of existing climate investments and put forward a range of new solutions, including putting the federal government’s massive purchasing power to work.

Here is why cement poses unique climate challenges — and how policymakers can leverage public procurement to help meet them.

Read More »

Also posted in Clean Power Plan, Economics, Energy, Greenhouse Gas Emissions, Innovation, Policy, Science / Comments are closed