Tell your state leaders to accelerate pro-clean energy permitting reform!

Two recent reports, one from FERC and one from leading analyst Cleanview, illustrate the current state of clean energy in the U.S. From January through September 2025, 21 GW of new solar power was built across America, making up 75% of the 28 GW of new electricity-generating capacity from all sources. Notably, that’s higher than the 20 GW of solar installed in Jan-Sep 2024, putting 2025 on track to be a record-high year for U.S. solar deployment.

Yet simultaneously, over 86 GW (86,000 MW!) of grid-scale solar farms, 79 GW of grid-scale battery storage projects, and have been cancelled, often forcibly, in 2025 alone. The White House continues to impose a U.S. electricity shortage. Utter madness!

There’s a strange double-vision required to comprehend the situation here. The U.S. is massively self-harming for painfully stupid ideological reasons and wildly under-performing on solar compared to what it could and should be building. Bad! But what’s left *still* counts as the best year for solar in U.S. history. Essentially, the surviving minority of solar projects that the White House couldn’t cancel are providing 75% of all new power from all sources built in America in 2025 and adding up to make 2025 on track to be a record-high year of American solar installations!

Solar’s just that good! Even now, a solar industry being strangled by corruptly weaponized permitting tangles is still dominant in the U.S. power build-out market! Just imagine what we could do if we eased up on the self-sabotage.

One encouraging sign is that state leaders are beginning to step up in a big way to help unleash American clean power!

In August 2025, Governor Jared Polis of Colorado instructed all state agencies to work to get new solar, wind, battery, and power line projects online “as quickly as possible” and to eliminate tangled administrative, interconnection, and permitting bottlenecks to pursue “maximal clean energy.”

In November 2025, Governor Tina Kotek of Oregon issued an excellent executive order along the same lines, mandating sweeping state government-wide identification and review of the woefully tangled permitting bottlenecks slowing down clean energy development!

And there are some encouraging signs that such state-level pro-clean energy permitting reform efforts are beginning to have an impact! The U.S. Energy Information Administration recently reported that the fraction of upcoming (i.e. surviving) U.S. solar projects reporting delays has declined slightly, from solar projects accounting for 25% of planned U.S. capacity reporting delays in the third quarter of 2024 down to solar projects accounting for 20% of planned U.S. capacity reporting delays in Q3 2025.

A capricious and destructive White House keeps hobbling the world’s cheapest electricity source with tariffs, tax credit repeals, and fossil fuel interests’ weaponization of permitting review, pushing U.S. electricity prices to rise sharply. But state leaders can stand up and fight for affordability, reliability, and clean air!  Abundant clean electricity is a foundational input for everything from economic growth to helping families’ cost of living to reducing healthcare costs from air pollution. State governments across America need to be laser-focused on identifying and eliminating bottlenecks to clean energy deployment as a top priority, using every power possible to speed up or skip over administrative, permitting, and interconnection hurdles. We need maximal clean energy, and we need it as fast as humanly possible!

Tell your state leaders to accelerate pro-clean energy permitting reform!