30 Million Solar Homes Initiative Promises 1.77 Million Jobs
A coalition composed of the Institute For Local Self-Reliance, Solar United Neighbors Action, the Initiative For Energy Justice, and Solar United Neighbors has created a white paper urging the federal government to create policy and funding initiatives that would support the addition of rooftop solar to 30 million US homes.
The proposal claims the 30 Million Solar plan would create 1.77 million new jobs and save $69 billion in energy costs in the first 6 years. Thereafter, it would reduce the nation’s energy bills by $30 billion a year. In addition, the amount of carbon dioxide kept out of American skies would be equivalent to shuttering 48 coal-fired generating plants for an entire year or taking 42 million conventional gasoline and diesel powered vehicles off the road.
That last part gets a Wow! from us here at CleanTechnica. Imagine how long it is going to take to get 42 million cars off the road at the current rate of EV adoption.
Policy Help & Financial Assistance
A big part of the 30 Million Solar initiative is convincing Congress to expand and extend the federal investment tax credits available for solar projects, many of which are scheduled to shrink in the near future before expiring altogether. The plan calls for bumping those credits back up to 30% and extending them for an additional 10 years. The critical elements include:
- Restoration, extension, and democratization of the Investment Tax Credit to provide a direct pay option for distributed solar projects and a 30% credit.
- Substantially increased investment in energy assistance and weatherization programs to permanently reduce energy burdens, especially with rooftop and community solar.
- New financing programs, including a national green bank and Clean Energy Victory Bonds.
- Substantial expansion of federal matching grants and loan guarantees for schools, rural homes and businesses, tribal communities, and equitable community solar projects.
- Loan loss reserves, especially to support clean energy portfolios within community development financial institutions.
- Virtual permitting, a national solar marketplace, rules supporting net metering and community solar requirements, and other market-boosting policies.
- Support for solar workers and small business owners from underrepresented groups.
- Measures to make sure federal programs and agencies are accountable to communities.
The Executive Summary of the plan reads as follows:
“The 30 Million Solar Homes policies leverage federal power to spark investment that can serve more than 30 million households with rooftop or community solar over the next five years. This decentralized approach to reaching one in four households with solar maximizes and disperses the economic benefits of expanding clean energy in the fight against climate change, directly benefiting as many Americans as possible.
“More than three quarters of total federal investment benefits marginalized communities, including low and moderate income communities, environmental justice communities, and solar deserts. Over 300 advocacy organizations, solar businesses, and faith communities have signed on in support of 30 Million Solar Homes.”
Two Thirds Of Benefits Will Flow To Underserved Communities
As of the end of the first quarter of this year, the U.S. solar industry had installed 102.8 GW of capacity, enough to power roughly 18.6 million homes. Adding rooftop solar to 30 million homes would equate to 151 GW in new solar capacity — 50% more than all the solar capacity currently in place.
Along with job creation, installing solar on 30 million homes would lead to 100 GW of the 151 GW of proposed capacity being installed in marginalized communities, helping to improve access equity to solar and easing the historic economic imbalance of the resource. The benefits of local solar are particularly important for these communities as many have been disproportionately impacted by the pandemic and face a slow economic recovery. Specific proposals that would benefit underserved communities include:
- A bonus 10% tax credit for commercial projects that provide Davis-Bacon prevailing wages and benefits.
- A 10% bonus credits to commercial projects primarily serving marginalized communities, or that provide resilience by combining solar and energy storage.
- A 10% bonus credits to residential projects also serving marginalized communities or providing resilience.
- Modifications to prioritize projects that provide a direct financial benefit to residents through electricity bill credits and other benefits.
The proposal also calls for:
- DOE loan guarantees for equitable community solar projects.
- Reauthorizing clean energy block grants for state, tribal, territorial, and local governments.
- Establishing solar plus storage grants for resiliency in marginalized communities.
- Instituting solar grants for schools to reinvest energy savings into operations.
- Establishing grants for developing residential and community solar in marginalized communities.
Speeding Up Solar Permitting
The so-called soft costs associated with rooftop solar can add a third to the cost of a system. The Solar Automated Permit Processing platform from the US Department of Energy hopes to speed up the permitting process and lower costs. It provides a standard portal for local governments to process permit applications that automatically checks codes to ensure safety while generating a standardized inspection checklist installers and inspectors can use to verify compliance in the field.
The DOE piloted the SolarAPP+ program in Tucson and Pima County in Arizona, and Menifee and Pleasant Valley in the California. “In Tucson, for example, SolarAPP+ reduced permitting reviews from approximately 20 business days to zero,” according to DOE.
“We have 3 million households today that have solar on their roofs, but the potential is so much greater,” DOE’s solar energy director told Reuters. “Having streamlined processes and an automated permitting platform that can make it faster, easier and cheaper for homeowners to go solar promises to really help expand the residential solar sector.”
Local governments and installers can now sign up to get started with the app or attend webinars listed on the DOE’s blog. It’s all part of the its Summer of Solar campaign aimed at lowering soft costs — design, siting, permitting, installation, and so forth — associated with rooftop solar power.
The Takeaway
The distinguishing feature of rooftop solar is it typically is not something done by traditional utility companies. They love solar because the cost of fuel is effectively zero. But they hate to see electricity democratized. There are a few progressive utility companies out there, but most of them take the position that, “It’s our electricity, dammit, and we alone will decide who gets it and how much you pay for it.” It’s a natural consequence of the monopoly model that has been the standard of the industry for over a century.
The 30 Million Solar plan would explode that status quo. Utility industry lobbyist are salivating over the prospect of driving a stake through the heart of this proposal.
HAWESVILLE, KY – May 10
Plant workers drive along an aluminum potline at Century Aluminum Company’s Hawesville plant in Hawesville, Ky. on Wednesday, May 10, 2017. (Photo by Luke Sharrett /For The Washington Post via Getty Images)
Aluminum
The Washington Post | The Washington Post | Getty Images
Sweeping tariffs on imported aluminum imposed by U.S. President Donald Trump are succeeding in reshaping global trade flows and inflating costs for American consumers, but are falling short of their primary goal: to revive domestic aluminum production.
Instead, rising costs, particularly skyrocketing electricity prices in the U.S. relative to global competitors, are leading to smelter closures rather than restarts.
The impact of aluminum tariffs at 25% is starkly visible in the physical aluminum market. While benchmark aluminum prices on the London Metal Exchange provide a global reference, the actual cost of acquiring the metal involves regional delivery premiums.
This premium now largely reflects the tariff cost itself.
In stark contrast, European premiums were noted by JPMorgan analysts as being over 30% lower year-to-date, creating a significant divergence driven directly by U.S. trade policy.
This cost will ultimately be borne by downstream users, according to Trond Olaf Christophersen, the chief financial officer of Norway-based Hydro, one of the world’s largest aluminum producers. The company was formerly known as Norsk Hydro.
“It’s very likely that this will end up as higher prices for U.S. consumers,” Christophersen told CNBC, noting the tariff cost is a “pass-through.” Shares of Hydro have collapsed by around 17% since tariffs were imposed.
The downstream impact of the tariffs is already being felt by Thule Group, a Hydro customer that makes cargo boxes fitted atop cars. The company said it’ll raise prices by about 10% even though it manufactures the majority of the goods sold in the U.S locally, as prices of raw materials, such as steel and aluminum, have shot up.
But while tariffs are effectively leading to prices rise in the U.S., they haven’t spurred a revival in domestic smelting, the energy-intensive process of producing primary aluminum.
The primary barrier remains the lack of access to competitively priced, long-term power, according to the industry.
“Energy costs are a significant factor in the overall production cost of a smelter,” said Ami Shivkar, principal analyst of aluminum markets at analytics firm Wood Mackenzie. “High energy costs plague the US aluminium industry, forcing cutbacks and closures.”
“Canadian, Norwegian, and Middle Eastern aluminium smelters typically secure long-term energy contracts or operate captive power generation facilities. US smelter capacity, however, largely relies on short-term power contracts, placing it at a disadvantage,” Shivkar added, noting that energy costs for U.S. aluminum smelters were about $550 per tonne compared to $290 per tonne for Canadian smelters.
Recent events involving major U.S. producers underscore this power vulnerability.
In March 2023, Alcoa Corp announced the permanent closure of its 279,000 metric ton Intalco smelter, which had been idle since 2020. Alcoa said that the facility “cannot be competitive for the long-term,” partly because it “lacks access to competitively priced power.”
Similarly, in June 2022, Century Aluminum, the largest U.S. primary aluminum producer, was forced to temporarily idle its massive Hawesville, Kentucky smelter – North America’s largest producer of military-grade aluminum – citing a “direct result of skyrocketing energy costs.”
Century stated the power cost required to run the facility had “more than tripled the historical average in a very short period,” necessitating a curtailment expected to last nine to twelve months until prices normalized.
The industry has also not had a respite as demand for electricity from non-industrial sources has risen in recent years.
Hydro’s Christophersen pointed to the artificial intelligence boom and the proliferation of data centers as new competitors for power. He suggested that new energy production capacity in the U.S., from nuclear, wind or solar, is being rapidly consumed by the tech sector.
“The tech sector, they have a much higher ability to pay than the aluminium industry,” he said, noting the high double-digit margins of the tech sector compared to the often low single-digit margins at aluminum producers. Hydro reported an 8.3% profit margin in the first quarter of 2025, an increase from the 3.5% it reported for the previous quarter, according to Factset data.
“Our view, and for us to build a smelter [in the U.S.], we would need cheap power. We don’t see the possibility in the current market to get that,” the CFO added. “The lack of competitive power is the reason why we don’t think that would be interesting for us.”
While failing to ignite domestic primary production, the tariffs are undeniably causing what Christophersen termed a “reshuffling of trade flows.”
When U.S. market access becomes more costly or restricted, metal flows to other destinations.
Christophersen described a brief period when exceptionally high U.S. tariffs on Canadian aluminum — 25% additional tariffs on top of the aluminum-specific tariffs — made exporting to Europe temporarily more attractive for Canadian producers. Consequently, more European metals would have made their way into the U.S. market to make up for the demand gap vacated by Canadian aluminum.
The price impact has even extended to domestic scrap metal prices, which have adjusted upwards in line with the tariff-inflated Midwest premium.
Hydro, also the world’s largest aluminum extruder, utilizes both domestic scrap and imported Canadian primary metal in its U.S. operations. The company makes products such as window frames and facades in the country through extrusion, which is the process of pushing aluminum through a die to create a specific shape.
“We are buying U.S. scrap [aluminium]. A local raw material. But still, the scrap prices now include, indirectly, the tariff cost,” Christophersen explained. “We pay the tariff cost in reality, because the scrap price adjusts to the Midwest premium.”
“We are paying the tariff cost, but we quickly pass it on, so it’s exactly the same [for us],” he added.
RBC Capital Markets analysts confirmed this pass-through mechanism for Hydro’s extrusions business, saying “typically higher LME prices and premiums will be passed onto the customer.”
This pass-through has occurred amid broader market headwinds, particularly downstream among Hydro’s customers.
RBC highlighted the “weak spot remains the extrusion divisions” in Hydro’s recent results and noted a guidance downgrade, reflecting sluggish demand in sectors like building and construction.
— CNBC’s Greg Kennedy contributed reporting.
Danish energy giant Ørsted has canceled plans for the Hornsea 4 offshore wind farm, dealing a major blow to the UK’s renewable energy ambitions.
Hornsea 4, at a massive 2.4 gigawatts (GW), would have become one of the largest offshore wind farms in the world, generating enough clean electricity to power over 1 million UK homes. But Ørsted announced that it’s abandoning the project “in its current form.”
“The adverse macroeconomic developments, continued supply chain challenges, and increased execution, market, and operational risks have eroded the value creation,” said Rasmus Errboe, group president and CEO of Ørsted.
Reuters reported that Ørsted’s cancellation of Hornsea 4 would result in a projected loss of up to 5.5 billion Danish crowns ($837.85 million) in breakaway fees and asset write-downs. The company’s market value has declined by 80% since its peak in 2021.
The cancellation highlights significant challenges currently facing offshore wind development in Europe, particularly in the UK. The combination of higher material costs, inflation, and global financial instability has made large-scale renewable projects increasingly difficult to finance and complete.
Ørsted’s decision is a significant setback to the UK’s energy transition goals. The UK currently has around 15 GW of offshore wind, and Hornsea 4’s size would have provided almost 7% of the additional capacity needed for the UK’s 50 GW by 2030 target, according to The Times. Losing this immense project off the Yorkshire coast could hamper the UK’s pace of reducing dependency on fossil fuels, especially amid volatile global energy markets.
The UK government reiterated its commitment to renewable energy, promising to work closely with industry leaders to overcome financial and logistical hurdles. Energy Secretary Ed Miliband told reporters in Norway that the UK is “still committed to working with Orsted to seek to make Hornsea 4 happen by 2030.”
Ørsted says it remains committed to its other UK-based projects, including the Hornsea 3 wind farm, which is expected to generate around 2.9 GW once completed at the end of 2027. Despite the challenges, the company emphasized its ongoing commitment to the British renewable market, pointing to the critical need for policy support and economic stability to ensure future developments.
Yet, the cancellation of Hornsea 4 demonstrates that even flagship renewable projects are vulnerable in the face of economic pressures and global uncertainties, which have been heightened under the Trump administration in the US.
Read more: The world’s single-largest wind farm gets the green light
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The Tesla Roadster appears to be quietly disappearing after years of delay. is it ever going to be made?
I may have jinxed it with Betteridge’s Law of Headlines, which suggests any headline ending in a question mark can be answered with “no.”
The prototype for the next-generation Tesla Roadster was first unveiled in 2017, and it was supposed to come into production in 2020, but it has been delayed every year since then.
It was supposed to get 620 miles (1,000 km) of range and accelerate from 0 to 60 mph in 1.9 seconds.
It has become a sort of running joke, and there are doubts that it will ever come to market despite Tesla’s promise of dozens of free new Roadsters to Tesla owners who participated in its referral program years ago.
Tesla uses the promise of free Roadsters to help generate billions of dollars worth of sales, which Tesla owners delivered, but the automaker never delivered on its part of the agreement.
Furthermore, many people placed deposits ranging from $50,000 to $250,000 to reserve the vehicle, which was supposed to hit the market 5 years ago.
The official timelines from Tesla are pretty useless at this point since they haven’t stuck to any of them, but the latest official one dates back to July 2024 when CEO Elon Musk said this:
“With respect to Roadster, we’ve completed most of the engineering. And I think there’s still some upgrades we want to make to it, but we expect to be in production with Roadster next year. It will be something special.”
He said that Tesla had completed “most of the engineering”, but he initially said the engineering would be done in 2021 and that was already 3 years after the prototype was unveiled and a year after it was supposed to be in production:
Musk commented on the Roadster again in October 2024, but he didn’t reiterate the 2025 timeline. Instead, he called the new Roadster “the cherry on the icing on the cake.”
Tesla’s leadership has been virtually silent about the new Roadster since. Two Tesla executives even had to be reminded about the Roadster by Jay Leno after they “forgot” about it when listing upcoming new Tesla vehicles with tri-motor powertrain.
There was one small update about the Roadster in Tesla’s financial results last month.
The automaker has a table of all its vehicle production, and the Roadster was updated from “in development” to “design development” in the table:
It’s not clear if that’s progress or Tesla is just rephrasing it. Either way, it is not “construction”, which makes it unlikely that the Roadster is going into production this year.
If ever…
Electrek’s Take
It looks like Tesla owes about 80 Tesla Roadsters for free to Tesla owners who referred purchases, and it owes significant discounts on hundreds of units.
It’s hard for me to believe that Tesla is not delivering the new Roadster because the vehicle program would start about $100 million in the red, but at this point, I have no idea. It very well might be the reason.
However, I think it’s more likely that Tesla is just terrible at bringing multiple vehicle programs to market simultaneously. Case in point: it launched a single new vehicle in the last five years.
At this point, I think it’s more likely that the Roadster will never happen. It will join other Tesla products like the Cybertruck Range Extender.
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