solar

On August 2, 2027, the Sun will ‘go out’ for up to six minutes. The incredible phenomenon will be most visible across North of Africa and parts of the Middle East

A rare solar eclipse in 2027 has spiked bookings to five countries.

On August 2, 2027, the Sun ‘go out’ for up to six minutes. The incredible phenomenon will be most visible across North of Africa and parts of the Middle East. Google searches for destinations in this area have surged over the past couple of months as celestial event enthusiasts work out how they can be there when it happens.

The 2027 total solar eclipse will be the longest eclipse of the century visible from land. Some of the best destinations to witness the eclipse include:

• Tangier, Morocco – This area is directly beneath the central shadow, and you can expect around four minutes of totality
• Oran, Algeria – You can expect over five minutes of totality
• Sfax, Tunisia – You can expect over five minutes of totality
• Benghazi, Libya – This area is along the centerline passage, offering about five minutes of totality
• Luxor, Egypt – This area is near the point of greatest eclipse, where you can expect near-maximum totality of over six minutes

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To celebrate the rare event, Wild Frontiers , a B Corp tour operator that specialises in adventure travel, has launched three exclusive ‘eclipse special’ tours, and bookings for all departures sold out within 24 hours. Wild Frontiers has since added new departure dates to its eclipse tour collection and is anticipating similar levels of demand.

Clare Tobin, CEO at Wild Frontiers, said: “This is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to witness one of the most incredible natural spectacles. We launched tours in three of the best viewing points in north Africa.

“Travellers can observe the event from a traditional houseboat on the waters of the Nile in Egypt, among the atmospheric UNESCO Roman ruins of Timgad in Algeria or from the epic amphitheatre of El Jem in Tunisia. We previously ran an eclipse tour in Northern Mexico in 2024 and, whilst it was popular, we have seen even more demand for the 2027 tours.”

The term ‘astro-tourism’ came to light towards the end of last year, with experts coining it as a key travel trend for 2025. The term has been used to describe travellers becoming increasingly interested in escaping the urban city lights, in pursuit of dark skies.

Now it seems that astro-tourism is becoming more than stargazing and trips to see the northern lights. Clare says: “Travellers are seemingly fascinated with space, the stars and natural phenomena and they’re turning their attention to the skies. Witnessing celestial events has become more accessible for several reasons, such as more accurate forecasting predications, advancements in technology and increased education and coverage around the topic.

“As demand for ‘astro-tourism’ continues to increase, the ability to travel to these destinations also becomes more accessible. Travellers can now plan and book trips in advance that are centred around significant celestial events. There is no better way to escape and feel at one with nature than to behold such an extraordinary event.”

For travellers who wish to add ‘witness a natural phenomenon’ to their travel bucket list, below are some of most significant eclipse events over the next two years.

12

Most visible from: Iceland, Northern Spain and the Balearic Islands, Greenland, parts of northeastern Portugal and Russia. The best of the eclipse will take place over the water however.

17

An annular solar eclipse happens when the moon passes between the Sun and Earth, but is too far from Earth to completely cover the Sun. This causes what is often referred to as a ‘ring of fire’ effect, where a bright rind of sunlight can be seen around the moon’s silhouette.

Most visible from: Antarctica, Southern South America (particularly southern Argentine and southern Chile), Southern Africa (including South Africa, Namibia and Botswana), Madagascar.

Lunar eclipses

A lunar eclipse takes place when the Earth moves directly between the Sun and the Moon, casting its shadow onto the Moon, which makes it appear a reddish colour. It only occurs during the full moon stage and doesn’t happen every month as the Moon’s orbit is tilted, relative to the Earth’s orbit.

7 September 2025

Most visible from: India, China, Russia, Central Asia, Western Australia, New Zealand, eastern Africa, parts of Europe (especially Czech Republic).

3 March 2026

Most visible from: Northeast Asia (especially Japan, Korea and China), northwestern North America (western Canada and Alaska), Central Pacific Ocean.

28 August 2026

Most visible from: North America (USA, Canada, Mexico, Caribbean), South America (Brazil, Argentina, Chile, Peru, Colombia), Spain, France, Nigeria, Egypt, Pacific Islands (Hawaii, parts of Polynesia).

SEOUL, Oct. 13 (UPI) — South Korean chemical giant OCI Holdings said Monday it will enter the solar wafer business to target the U.S. market by acquiring a facility being built in Vietnam.

Toward that end, its subsidiary, OCI TerraSus, plans to spend $78 million to purchase a 65% stake in a 2.7-gigawatt wafer plant from Elite Solar Power Wafer, which is scheduled for completion by the end of this month.

OCI Holdings expects the factory to start rolling out wafers early next year, without having to worry about U.S. tax-credit restrictions.

A solar wafer is a tin slice of crystalline silicon that serves as the primary building block for manufacturing solar cells.

The United States introduced legislation in early July barring prohibited foreign entities from receiving clean energy tax credits. These are entities controlled or significantly influenced by such nations as North Korea, China, Russia and Iran.

OCI Holdings projected that the deal would create synergy because OCI TerraSus is set to provide all the polysilicon needed for the new facility to manufacture non-prohibited foreign entity wafers.

The Seoul-based corporation said the plant’s capacity could be doubled within six months with an additional $40 million investment. However, it has yet to decide whether to proceed with the expansion.

“This strategic investment brings us closer to building a supply chain that facilitates U.S. exports,” OCI Holdings Chairman Lee Woo-hyun said in a statement. “We will continue to strengthen our presence in the global solar market by fostering partnerships with local companies in Southeast Asia.”

In July, OCI TerraSus joined hands with Japan’s Tokuyama to channel $435 million into establishing a semiconductor-grade polysilicon factory in Malaysia. Each company holds a 50% stake in the project.

Oct. 10 (UPI) — The Trump administration has canceled the proposed Esmeralda 7 Solar Project in Nevada that would have been among the world’s largest solar power facilities.

Officials with the Bureau of Land Management on Thursday announced an environmental impact review of the proposed renewable energy facility has been canceled, which in turn cancels the project, Politico reported.

The canceled project would have built seven solar power-generation projects within the Esmeralda site that would have occupied 118,000 acres of land in Nevada’s Esmeralda County and about 30 miles west of Tonopah and 270 miles northwest of Las Vegas.

The project would have generated up to 6.2 gigawatts of energy over its service life, which is enough energy to power up to 2 million homes, according to Heatmap.

The proposed solar power project generally enjoyed smooth sailing through the Biden administration and would have included the NextEra Energy utility firm and Invenergy among its developers, The New York Times reported.

Nevada Gov. Joe Lombardo, a Republican, in August expressed his concerns that the solar power project was being delayed or canceled unnecessarily in a letter to Interior Secretary Doug Burgum.

Lombardo said the project’s completion would help Nevada to better support the nation’s energy needs for mining projects and data centers, according to The New York Times.

President Donald Trump previously criticized solar- and wind-power projects as insufficient and costly compared to natural gas and coal power-generation facilities.

Since Trump took office in January, the Interior Department has added new review requirements for wind and solar projects, which have slowed their development and have stopped some from moving forward.

The Interior Department also has begun investigating bird deaths and other impacts on wildlife and plant life by large solar and wind projects.

While the Esmeralda 7 project appears to be canceled, another Nevada solar power project called Dodge Flat II is still in progress, according to the BLM.

In the energy sector on Wednesday, a north-of-the-border stock was producing the most energy. Canadian Solar (CSIQ 14.11%) was having quite a day on the exchange, as investors were bidding its shares up by almost 14% in late-session action. This was on the back of the company’s news that it secured a new deal for its energy storage business.

A powerful development

Before market open today, Canadian Solar announced that its e-STORAGE unit had signed a set of agreements with privately held Aypa Power. Under those contracts, the Canadian Solar unit will provide its SolBank energy storage system to a pair of battery energy storage projects run by Aypa in Ontario, Canada’s most populous province.

Image source: Getty Images.

The deal will be in force for some time, assuming it goes fairly well. Canadian Solar said that the two partners had signed 20-year long term services agreements for this work.

The solar company added that delivery is slated to begin in the first quarter of next year, with the aim of launching commercial operations at some point in the first half of 2027. The deal expands an existing business relationship between Canadian Solar and Aypa.

The solar company did not provide any financial details of its new contracts with Aypa.

In for the long haul

As these particulars were lacking, it’s difficult to get a handle on how this rather lengthy arrangement will impact Canadian Solar’s key fundamentals like revenue or profitability. That said, any time a company secures a 20-year deal to supply its wares, the news is at least mildly positive. The bullish investor reaction and the double-digit share price pop feel entirely deserved.

For nearly a decade, President Trump has promised “energy dominance” — a vague but alluring slogan hinting at a world in which the U.S. is king. A world in which other nations depend on us for their power, ensuring economic prosperity in the form of domestic jobs, cheap gasoline and low electric bills.

The problem is, it’s a breathtaking lie.

As recent events have made abundantly clear, Trump and his allies don’t care about energy dominance. They care about killing renewable energy and helping fossil fuel companies profit. Even if it means higher power costs. Even if it means destroying American jobs. Even if it means ceding the future to China.

All of which is happening. “Energy dominance” is a terrifyingly effective propaganda campaign that demands a robust response from the renewable energy industry, which, like the Democratic Party, has largely failed to meet the moment. Solar and wind companies have instead let Trump’s messaging rule the day, pushing back weakly at best as they scramble for slices of an “energy dominance” pie that will never be theirs.

It’s time for them to start punching back.

Amid a yearlong assault on clean power — including Trump’s “One Big Beautiful Bill,” which slashed federal incentives for solar farms, wind turbines and electric cars — nothing has better exemplified the MAGA Republican Party’s stance toward renewables than an unprecedented, possibly illegal effort to block several massive clean energy projects, including at least one already under construction.

Last month, the Trump administration ordered the Danish company Orsted to stop building Revolution Wind, a $4-billion floating wind farm in the waters off the Rhode Island coast that was already 80% complete. A judge ruled Monday that work can proceed — a win for New Englanders, who stand to pay half a billion dollars per year in higher utility bills and face a higher risk of blackouts if the project doesn’t come online.

Also last month, Trump’s Interior Secretary Doug Burgum reversed the Biden administration’s approval of an Idaho wind project, Lava Ridge. Earlier, he halted construction of Empire Wind off the New York coast, changing course only after Gov. Kathy Hochul reportedly agreed to approve two gas pipelines. Burgum’s agency asked judges last week to cancel approval of offshore wind farms in Maryland and Massachusetts.

Trump’s hatred for wind turbines dates back to his failed effort in the mid-2010s to derail an offshore wind farm that he said would ruin the views from his Scottish golf resort. But he and his accomplices have attacked the solar industry, too.

A worker helps build the Gemini solar project on federal lands outside Las Vegas in January 2023, during the Biden administration.

(Brian van der Brug / Los Angeles Times)

Trump’s appointees have issued directives making it harder for solar and wind companies to qualify for tax credits before they expire, and stalling approvals for renewable energy projects on public and private lands. The U.S. Department of Agriculture gutted a program that provides financial support for farmers who want to lower their energy bills by installing solar panels.

“The days of stupidity are over in the USA!!!” Trump wrote on social media in August.

If climate-friendly energy is stupid, then America’s biggest energy companies are pretty dumb. Solar panels, wind turbines and batteries made up 94% of the nation’s new power capacity last year — a trend driven by the fact that solar and wind are the cheapest sources of new electricity. Even in Texas, renewables are booming.

So how have Trump and friends justified their attacks on clean energy?

In large part by lying.

In that August social media post, Trump claimed that states reliant on wind and solar power “are seeing RECORD BREAKING INCREASES IN ELECTRICITY AND ENERGY COSTS.”

That’s false. Although Californians do pay high electric rates for complex reasons, states with similarly climate-friendly power supplies — such as wind-rich Iowa, Kansas and South Dakota — enjoy some of the country’s cheapest electricity.

Energy Secretary Chris Wright, meanwhile, said in a recent interview that in the absence of batteries, solar panels and wind turbines are essentially “worthless” when the sun isn’t shining and the wind isn’t blowing — rehashing a tired anti-renewables talking point that deliberately ignores the incredible growth of energy storage, driven by rapidly falling battery costs.

Wright — who previously ran a fossil fuel company — is also engaged in the latest climate-denial fad: acknowledging that global warming is real but insisting the consequences aren’t so bad, and that phasing out oil and gas is actually more harmful than replacing them with clean energy. Never mind the bigger wildfires, the harsher droughts, the deadlier heat waves, the rising seas, the deadly air pollution…

To support his lies, Wright handpicked five infamously contrarian researchers who produced a report questioning decades of well-established climate science. Dozens of leading experts quickly uncovered errors.

“The rise of human flourishing over the past two centuries is a story worth celebrating,” Wright said in a written statement alongside the report. “Yet we are told — relentlessly — that the very energy systems that enabled this progress now pose an existential threat.”

Oil, gas and coal did indeed help build today’s society. And now we know they pose an existential threat to society if we keep using them for too much longer.

This shouldn’t be a hard story for renewable energy companies to tell. One European power generator, at least, is doing it well.

Some of the Hywind Tampen floating offshore wind turbines in the North Sea, operated by Equinor, an international energy company based in Norway.

(Ole Jørgen Bratland / Equinor)

In a recent ad for Swedish energy company Vattenfall, actor Samuel L. Jackson stands on a bluff at the edge of a gorgeous sea. He looks out across the water, where wind turbines spin serenely in the distance.

“Mother— wind farms. Loud, ugly, harmful to nature. Who says that?” Jackson asks, shaking his head. “These giants are standing tall against fossil fuels. Rising out of the ocean like a middle finger to CO2.”

The tagline: “We’re working for fossil freedom.”

You’d be hard-pressed to find such punchy, provocative messaging from the U.S. clean energy industry.

When the Trump administration said last month it was making it harder for solar and wind projects to qualify for federal tax credits, for instance, Abigail Ross Hopper — president of the Solar Energy Industries Assn. — urged the Trump administration to “stop the political games, stop punishing businesses, and get serious about how to actually build the power we need right now to meet demand and stay competitive.”

Similarly, when federal officials halted work on Revolution Wind, American Clean Power Assn. Chief Executive Jason Grumet called it “a broken promise to the communities, workers, consumers, and businesses counting on this project.”

“Taking jobs away from American families while raising their energy bills is not leadership,” Grumet said.

Underlying both missives — and the industry’s entire playbook, so far as I’ve seen — is the assumption that clean energy companies are dealing with a normal, good-faith government. That Trump and company aren’t just trying to own the libs and line the pockets of campaign fundraisers. That they truly care about “energy dominance.”

It’s time for solar and wind executives to stop pleading with MAGA Republicans and start telling Americans the real story. That clean energy is cheaper, healthier and just as reliable as fossil fuels. That China is dominating the renewable energy arms race, and we badly need to catch up. That we don’t need coal, and we won’t always need oil and gas, and “energy dominance” is a lie meant to benefit the few at the expense of the many.

That strategy probably won’t pay off in the short term. But in the long term, nothing else will.

Iraq is advancing several solar power projects as part of a plan to meet its electricity needs.

Iraq is set to open its first industrial-scale solar plant in a vast desert area in Karbala as the government attempts to tackle an electricity crisis that has led to widespread blackouts.

Authorities said the plant, the largest of its kind in Iraq, will be inaugurated on Sunday to eventually produce up to 300 megawatts of electricity at its peak, according to Iraqi media reports.

Tens of thousands of black panels are set out in rows in a huge desert area, spanning some 4,000 dunams (1,000 acres or 400 hectares) in the al-Hur area of Karbala, located southwest of capital Baghdad.

Nasser Karim al-Sudani, head of the national team for solar energy projects in the Iraqi prime minister’s office, said another project under construction in Babil province will have a capacity of 225 megawatts, and work will also begin soon on a 1,000-megawatt project in the southern province of Basra.

قطاع الطاقة 🇮🇶 | الاول في العراق.. صحراء محافظة كربلاء المقدسة تكتسي بالألواح الشمسية مع تواصل مشروع انشاء محطة كهرباء للطاقة الشمسية ستولد 300 ميغاواط من الطاقة الكهربائية pic.twitter.com/ZTn9MwArat

— مشاريع العراق – Iraq projects (@IraqProjects) July 29, 2025

Translation: The first in Iraq. The desert of the holy Karbala Governorate is covered with solar panels as the project to establish a solar power plant continues, which will generate 300 megawatts of electrical energy.

The projects are part of a larger vision to account for a portion of Iraq’s electricity needs using large-scale solar power plants that could help ease the electricity crisis while also reducing the negative environmental impact of gas emissions.

Deputy Minister of Electricity Adel Karim said Iraq has solar projects with a combined capacity of 12,500 megawatts either being implemented, in the approval process, or under negotiation. Barring the semi-autonomous northern Kurdistan region of Iraq, the projects could potentially supply up to 20 percent of Iraq’s total electricity demand, according to the official.

But despite its massive oil and gas resources, Iraq continues to face – as it has for decades – electricity shortages rooted in war, corruption and mismanagement.

Nationwide electricity consumption peaked at about 55,000 megawatts this summer as scorching temperatures exceeded 50 degrees Celsius (122 degrees Fahrenheit) in some areas.

This is while deputy minister Karim said the country is now producing up to 28,000 megawatts of electricity, including about 8,000 megawatts fuelled by natural gas imported from neighbouring Iran and fed to power plants in Iraq.

The critical supplies from Iran have faced many challenges over the years as well, particularly from unilateral sanctions imposed by the United States in an effort to pressure Tehran and squeeze its revenue streams amid a standoff over Iran’s nuclear programme and military capabilities.

In March, Washington announced it was ending a sanctions waiver that allowed Iraq to directly purchase electricity from Iran, which needed to be renewed every 120 days. The US has, for now, left another waiver in place that lets Iraq buy Iranian natural gas to feed its power plants.

Iran is also facing multiple crises, including massive energy shortages, an issue that has affected its exports to Iraq.

BBC

Power from the sun, but not at home

A daily struggle for basics

A long wait

Dinner by torchlight

The California Supreme Court sided with environmental groups in a Thursday ruling, saying that state lawyers were wrong in their claim that the Public Utilities Commission’s decision to slash rooftop solar incentives could not be challenged.

The unanimous decision sends the case brought by the three groups back to the appeals court.

The groups argue the utilities commission violated state law in 2022 when it cut the value of the credits that panel owners receive for sending their unused power to the electric grid by as much as 80%. The rules apply to Californians installing the panels after April 14, 2023.

The Supreme Court justices said the appeals court erred in January 2024 when it ruled against the environmental groups. In that decision, the appeals court said that courts must defer to how the commission interpreted the law because it had more expertise in utility matters.

“This deferential standard of review leaves no basis for faulting the Commission’s work,” the appeals court had concluded then in its opinion.

The environmental groups argued the appeals court ignored a 1998 law that said the commission’s decisions should be held to the same standard of court review as those by other state agencies.

“The California Supreme Court has ruled in our favor that the CPUC is not above the law,” said Bernadette Del Chiaro, senior vice president at the Environmental Working Group, after Thursday’s decision was published. The other groups filing the case are the Center for Biological Diversity and The Protect Our Communities Foundation.

The utilities commission did not immediately respond to a request for comment about the ruling.

More than 2 million solar systems sit on the roofs of homes, businesses and schools in California — more than any other state. Environmentalists say that number must increase if the state is to meet its goal, set by a 2018 law, of using only carbon-free energy by 2045.

The utilities commission has said that the credits given to the rooftop panel owners on their electric bill have become so valuable that they were resulting in “a cost shift” of billions of dollars to those who do not own the panels. This has raised electric bills, especially hurting low-income electric customers, the commission says.

The credits for energy sent by the rooftop systems to the grid had been valued at the retail rate for electricity, which has risen fast as the commission has voted in recent years to approve rate increases the utilities have requested.

The state’s three big for-profit electric utilities — Southern California Edison, Pacific Gas & Electric and San Diego Gas & Electric — have sided with commission in the case.

The utilities have long complained that electric bills have been rising because owners of the rooftop solar panels are not paying their fair share of the fixed costs required to maintain the electric grid.

For decades, the utilities have worked to reduce the energy credits aimed at incentivizing Californians to invest in the solar panel systems. The rooftop systems have cut into the utilities’ sale of electricity.

Amid a string of setbacks for clean energy — tariffs, the Trump administration, Tesla’s declining sales numbers — California officials delivered a big win last month, approving the nation’s largest solar-plus-storage project.

Planned for 14 square miles in Fresno County, the project will provide up to 1,150 megawatts of solar energy and 4,600 megawatts-hours of battery storage. Dubbed the Darden project, it should be able to power 850,000 homes after dark. The developer, Intersect Power, will pay hundreds of millions of dollars in property taxes over time.

And because Darden will be built on retired farmland in an area running low on water, rather than pristine public lands in the desert, there are few environmental conflicts. No Joshua trees to chop down or endangered tortoises to displace. An easy place to build renewable energy and slow the climate crisis.

So why are many farmers in water-scarce parts of California fighting the solar industry?

State lawmakers are under pressure from Big Ag to kill or rewrite legislation that would make it easier to convert farmland to solar production. The Legislature rejected a similar bill last year, despite looming regulations that will require Central Valley farmers to pump less groundwater.

In southeastern California, meanwhile, the powerful Imperial Irrigation District — which controls more Colorado River water than the entire state of Arizona — voted this month to oppose further solar development on Imperial Valley farmland, even as a climate-fueled megadrought drains the river’s major reservoirs.

Again, why are farmers gumming up the clean energy transition?

“Agricultural land is very productive, and it’s something that we want to protect,” said J.B. Hamby, vice chair of the Imperial Irrigation District’s board of directors. “There’s ample opportunity to develop solar in other places.”

“One in 6 jobs in the Imperial Valley is directly tied to agriculture,” he added.

The California Aqueduct runs between farmland and a solar plant in Kern County, carrying water south from the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta.

(Al Seib / Los Angeles Times)

Big Ag groups are making a similar argument in the Central Valley, where Assembly Bill 1156 would boost solar by weakening a law called the Williamson Act, which is designed to keep lands in crop production.

“The bill removes that smart approach to land-use decisions, where you’re [putting] solar on the least-productive agricultural lands,” said Peter Ansel, director of policy advocacy for the California Farm Bureau Federation.

On the surface, those talking points sound fair. But they’re not the whole story.

State officials need to get real about the enormous amounts of renewable energy we still need to build to replace deadly, destructive fossil fuels — an estimated 60 gigawatts of solar, wind and battery capacity in the next decade (and twice that much by 2045). For context, California has never used more than 52 gigawatts of electricity at one time before. The huge jump is partly due to the expected rise in electric vehicles and data centers.

Thus far, many of the biggest solar plants in the western U.S. have been built on public lands in the desert, where the Obama and Biden administrations encouraged renewable energy. But conservation activists have increasingly raised concerns over harm to wildlife habitat and endangered species, slowing development.

To Shannon Eddy — executive director of the Large-scale Solar Assn., a California trade group — promoting more solar on farmland is an obvious response. That’s one reason her group is sponsoring AB 1156.

“We have to add more clean energy to the grid than we have ever added in the history of the electricity grid,” she said. “And somehow we have to find a way to look at this through a shared lens, understanding that if we are not able to reduce climate emissions by 50% globally by 2030, we’re toast.”

I wouldn’t go quite so far. If we fail to cut climate pollution nearly in half by 2030 — which scientists say is needed to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius above preindustrial levels — the world won’t suddenly end.

But heat waves, wildfires, storms and droughts will keep getting worse. Which is why we should do everything we can to avoid that outcome. Like trading some productive farmland for some badly needed clean energy.

A smoldering home during the Eaton fire on Jan. 8.

(Gina Ferazzi / Los Angeles Times)

The details of AB 1156 are complicated, but the results would be simple.

Across California, 16 million acres — about half the state’s farms and ranches — are protected by the Williamson Act. The 1965 law offers lower property taxes for landowners who agree to keep their holdings in agricultural use or open space. For a grower to renege on a Williamson Act contract — for instance, if they want to sell to a home developer — they have to pay a big fee, or else wait out the duration of their contract.

It’s a good deal for farmers — and, historically, a good way to prevent suburban sprawl.

The problem arises when a solar company finds a farmer who wants to stop cultivating some or all of their lands, but those lands still have years remaining on a Williamson Act contract. Solar companies work on thin margins, and Williamson Act cancellation fees can derail otherwise viable projects. That’s especially true now that Congress and President Trump have eviscerated federal incentives for renewable energy.

AB 1156 would let growers in water-stressed areas suspend their contracts to enable solar development, without anyone paying the fee. The solar company would pay full property taxes. Local officials would need to sign off.

And again: If less water inevitably means lost farmland, why not incentivize solar?

“You’re going to be restoring revenue to not only the landowner, but also to the local economy,” Eddy said.

Conservation activist Kim Delfino, president of consulting firm Earth Advocacy, often finds herself at loggerheads with the solar industry over large-scale projects in the desert. But she and one of her clients, the advocacy group Defenders of Wildlife, support AB 1156 — even though there are burrowing owls and a handful of other sensitive critters that have come to depend on agricultural lands.

“There’s no free lunch,” Delfino told me. “Anytime you put a project somewhere, it’s probably going to have some kind of environmental or habitat impacts.”

And that’s the crux of the challenge: There are lots of reasons to say no to clean energy in your community, even as we all collectively need it. Change is hard. It’s no surprise that farmers embracing solar are being drowned out by their neighbors who want to preserve agrarian communities as they’ve existed for a century.

Farmworkers weed rows of romaine lettuce outside Holtville, Calif., in the Imperial Valley.

(Carolyn Cole / Los Angeles Times)

If California wants to soften opposition to solar, it should try to support farmworkers who see solar as a threat to their livelihoods — even if climate-driven water shortages would have threatened their jobs regardless.

Dustin Mulvaney, an environmental studies professor at San José State, recently co-wrote a paper on solar and environmental justice in the Imperial Valley. He said state officials should require solar companies to pay for more “community benefits” to make up for lost jobs, but not such high fees that companies stop building.

“It’s not a huge, profitable industry. They struggle,” Mulvaney acknowledged.

It’s hard to know what the future holds for Imperial County, which already has 13,000 acres of solar on farmland. The county supervisors are responsible for approving solar projects, not the irrigation district.

Here’s hoping the supervisors recognize that some change is inevitable. Even if they don’t approve every project, they could prod developers toward marginal farmland with lower-quality soil.

In the Central Valley, conditions are more likely to hinge on AB 1156, which passed the Assembly last month and is moving through the Senate. Lawmakers should send it to Gov. Gavin Newsom despite opposition from the farm bureau and other agricultural groups that are demanding amendments.

The farm bureau has argued that letting landowners out of their Williamson Act contracts except under extremely narrow circumstances would be unfair. Were it not for the climate crisis, that argument might have merit.

The thing is, there is a climate crisis. California should act like it.

This is the latest edition of Boiling Point, a newsletter about climate change and the environment in the American West. Sign up here to get it in your inbox. And listen to our Boiling Point podcast here.

For more climate and environment news, follow @Sammy_Roth on X and @sammyroth.bsky.social on Bluesky.

Bangkok, Thailand – A brief text message informed Chonlada Siangkong that she had lost her job at a solar cell factory in Rayong, eastern Thailand.

The factory operated by Standard Energy Co, a subsidiary of Singaporean solar cell giant GSTAR, shut its doors last month in anticipation of United States President Donald Trump’s tariffs on solar panel exports from Southeast Asia.

From Monday, US Customs and Border Protection will begin imposing tariffs ranging from 375 percent to more than 3,500 percent on imports from Thailand, Cambodia, Vietnam and Malaysia.

The punishing duties, introduced in response to alleged unfair trade practices by Chinese-owned factories in the region, have raised questions about the continuing viability of Southeast Asia’s solar export trade, the source of about 80 percent of solar products sold in the US.

Like thousands of other workers in Thailand and across the region, Chonlada, a 33-year-old mother of one, is suddenly facing a more precarious future amid the trade crackdown.

“We were all shocked. The next day, they told us not to come to work and would not pay for compensation,” Chonlada told Al Jazeera.

US officials say Chinese producers have used Southeast Asian countries to skirt tariffs on China and “dump” cheap solar panels in the US market, harming their businesses.

US trade officials have named Jinko Solar, Trina Solar, Taihua New Energy Hounen, Sunshine Electrical Energy, Runergy and Boviet – all of which have major operations in Thailand, Malaysia, Cambodia or Vietnam – as the worst offenders.

Thai solar exports to the US were worth more than $3.7bn in 2023, just behind Vietnam at $3.9bn, according to the latest US trade data.

Standard Energy Co’s $300m facility in Rayong had been in operation for less than a year, producing its first solar cell to great fanfare in August.

“I’m baffled by what’s just happened,” Kanyawee, a production line manager at Standard Energy who asked to be referred to by his first name only, told Al Jazeera.

“New machines have just landed and we barely used them, they’re very costly too – a few million baht for each machine. They’ve also ordered tonnes of raw materials waiting to be produced.”

Ben McCarron, managing director of the risk consultancy Asia Research & Engagement, said Southeast Asian manufacturers are facing a serious hit from the US turn towards protectionism.

“There are suggestions that manufacturing might exit Southeast Asia entirely if tariffs are introduced either in a blanket way, or that specifically address Chinese-owned manufacturing capacity in the region,” McCarron told Al Jazeera.

“The implications are significant for these countries; Thailand, Vietnam, Cambodia, and Malaysia accounted for about 80 percent of the US’s solar imports in 2024,” McCarron said, adding that “some manufacturers have already begun shutting down and moving out of the region”.

Unfair advantage

US officials and businesses have accused China of giving its solar firms an unfair market advantage with subsidies.

China was the largest funder of clean energy in Southeast Asia between 2013 and 2023, pouring $2.7bn into projects in Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Thailand, and Vietnam, according to Zero Carbon Analytics.

The American Alliance for Solar Manufacturing Trade Committee, a coalition of seven industry players, was among the loudest voices to lobby for a sharp rise in levies on Chinese imports.

Without a reprieve from the notoriously unpredictable Trump, companies affected by the tariffs have little recourse apart from the ability to file an appeal once a year, or after five years, once a “sunset review” clause takes effect.

Some observers believe the sector may never recover.

“It’s not just the low-skilled labour that was affected by the trade war; many workers in the solar cell supply chain are technicians, skilled labourers,” Tara Buakamsri, an adviser to environmental organisation Greenpeace, told Al Jazeera.

“Even if you make a lot of savings, solar cell exporters would still need to cut down on these skilled workers.”

Others take a more bullish view, arguing that, once the dust has settled, Chinese solar firms will drive the supply of products needed to meet regional emissions targets.

While Thailand, Cambodia, Malaysia and Vietnam welcomed Chinese solar companies in part due to the large sums of up-front investment on offer, they are all also seeking to meet more of their energy needs with cleaner sources.

Before Trump entered office with his tariff agenda, Thailand had announced plans to become carbon neutral by 2050 and produce net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2065.

“A slowdown [or halt] in solar exports as a result of US tariffs may supercharge efforts in Southeast Asian markets by Chinese solar companies, which see the region as a critical and well-aligned destination for green technologies,” McCarron said.

“Leftover supply from slowing exports could be absorbed by domestic markets in Thailand, Malaysia, Cambodia, Vietnam, particularly if governments use the situation as a cost-effective opportunity to rapidly accelerate policy initiatives that stimulate domestic solar.”

For Southeast Asia’s solar companies, survival is also likely to depend on governments cutting red tape and loosening the control of oil and gas monopolies over the energy mix.

At the same time, the US’s exclusion of Southeast Asian solar imports could hamper the shift towards greener energy in the world’s top economy.

“Thailand’s solar cell production is heavily export-driven and the US has historically been a major export destination,” Pavida Pananond, a professor of international business at Thammasat Business School in Bangkok, told Al Jazeera.

But solar tariffs will “also hurt American consumers and the green transition in the US as prices become higher”.

The California Public Utilities Commission failed to abide by state law when it slashed financial incentives for residential rooftop solar panels in 2022, environmental groups argued before the California Supreme Court Wednesday.

The commission’s policy, which took effect in April 2023, cut the value of the credits that panel owners receive for sending power they don’t need to the electric grid by as much as 80%.

In arguments before the court, the environmental groups said the decision has stymied efforts to get homeowners and businesses to install the climate-friendly panels.

The commission violated state law, the groups argued, by not considering all the benefits of the solar panels in its decision and by not ensuring that rooftop solar systems could continue to expand in disadvantaged communities.

More than two million solar systems sit on the roofs of homes, businesses and schools in California — more than any other state. Environmentalists say that number must increase if the state is to meet its goal set by a 2018 law of using only carbon-free energy by 2045.

On the other side of the courtroom battle were lawyers from Attorney General Rob Bonta’s office, arguing that the commission’s five members, all pointed by Gov. Gavin Newsom, had followed the law in making their decision.

In briefs filed before Wednesday’s oral arguments, the government lawyers sided with those from the state’s three big for-profit electric utilities — Southern California Edison, Pacific Gas & Electric and San Diego Gas & Electric.

Mica Moore, deputy solicitor general, said at the hearing in downtown Los Angles that the credits given to the rooftop panel owners on their electric bill have become so valuable that they were resulting in “a cost shift” of billions of dollars to those who do not own the panels. This was raising electric bills, she said, especially hurting low-income electric customers.

The credits for the energy sent by the rooftop systems to the grid are valued at the retail rate for electricity, which has risen fast as the commissioners have voted in recent years to approve rate increases the utilities have requested.

The environmental groups and other critics of the commission’s decision have argued that there is no “cost shift.” They say that the commission failed to consider in its calculations the many benefits of the rooftop solar panels, including how they lower the amount of transmission lines and other infrastructure the utilities need to build.

“The cost shift narrative is a red herring,” argued plaintiff’s attorney Malinda Dickenson, representing the Center for Biological Diversity, the Environmental Working Group and the Protect Our Communities Foundation.

Moore countered by saying the commission doesn’t have to consider all the possible societal or private benefits of the rooftop panels.

For example, even though the rooftop panels could result in conserving land that was otherwise needed for industrial scale solar farms, the government lawyers argued in their brief, the commission was not obligated to consider that value in its calculation of the amount of costs the rooftop panels shift to other customers.

The government lawyers also said the commission had created other programs beyond the electric bill credits to help disadvantaged communities afford the solar systems.

The utilities have long complained that electric bills have been rising because owners of the rooftop solar panels are not paying their fair share of the fixed costs required to maintain the electric grid.

During the oral arguments, the seven justices focused on a legal question of whether a state appeals court erred when it ruled in January 2024 against the environmental groups and said that the court must defer to how the commission interpreted the law because it had more expertise in utility matters.

“This deferential standard of review leaves no basis for faulting the Commission’s work,” the appeals court concluded in its opinion.

The environmental groups argue the appeals court ignored a 1998 law that said the commission’s decisions should be held to the same standard of court review as those by other state agencies.

Moore told the seven justices that the appeals court had made the correct decision to defer to the commission.

Not all justices seemed to agree with that.

“But we’re pretty good about figuring out what the law says,” Associate Justice Carol Corrigan said to Moore during the proceeding. “Why should we defer on that to the commission?”

The justices will weigh the arguments made by both sides and issue a decision in the next 90 days.

The big utilities have for decades tried to reduce the energy credits aimed at incentivizing Californians to invest in the solar panel systems that can cost tens of thousands of dollars. The rooftop systems have cut into the utilities’ sale of electricity.

On another front, the state’s three big utilities are now lobbying in Sacramento to reduce credits for Californians who installed their panels before April 15, 2023. The commission’s decision in 2022 left the incentives in place for those panel owners for 20 years after their purchase.

Early this year, Assemblywoman Lisa Calderon (D-Whittier), a former Southern California Edison executive, introduced a bill that would have ended the program for all solar owners who installed their systems by April 2023 after 10 years. In face of opposition and protests by solar owners, Calderon amended the bill so it would end the program — where credits are valued at the retail electric rate — only for those selling their homes.

Calderon said the bill would save the state’s electric customers $2.5 billion over the next 18 years.

On Monday, Roderick Brewer, an Edison lobbyist, sent an email to Assemblymembers, urging them to vote for the bill known as AB 942. “Save Electricity Customers Billions, Promote Equity,” he urged in the email.

The Assembly voted 46 to 14 to approve the bill on Tuesday night, sending it to the state Senate for consideration.

The timing of the vote surprised opponents of the bill. They expected a vote late this week because of rules that allow more time for bills to be reviewed after they are amended. Calderon amended the bill late Monday.

Nick Miller, a spokesman for Assembly Speaker Robert Rivas, said Calderon had asked for a waiver of the rules so that it could be voted on Tuesday night.

Such waivers, Miller said, are “not uncommon.”