President Donald Trump’s (R) new budget proposal cuts climate protection to the bone and makes deep cuts into the energy department. While it should be no surprise as Trump promised steep cuts to pretty much everything except defense—Trump’s first budget proposal is still disappointing and rife with draconian cuts to programs that are creating jobs for and protecting the health of millions of Americans. The proposal quickly angered clean energy and environmental advocates, among others. 

Following news of the one of the biggest solar and storage projects in the world completed in Hawaii last week, Tesla announced this week that it is offering $1.15 billion in stock options to get production of its Model 3 underway this year. The Model 3, though still as flashy as Tesla’s other electric vehicles, is the company’s first attempt at making a “Model T” type vehicle for the masses. 

Energy efficiency improvements, as well as Solar and wind power,  are less expensive alternatives to replace aging, polluting coal-fired power plants than even natural gas, according a recent report from the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC). The report was issued even as the Trump Administration attempts to make it easier for coal miners to pollute and pulls back on other environmental regulations, including attempting to repeal Obama’s Clean Power Plan.

Solar power plays an important role in the ability of buildings to achieve net-zero energy use. That’s certainly the case in Wilde Lake Middle School, the first school in Maryland to achieve net-zero energy use at least in part because of its rooftop and ground-mounted solar arrays. 

Last week the US solar industry revealed that it had its biggest year ever in 2016, installing 14.8 gigawatts of new solar power. At the same time it became more apparent that clean energy contributed highly to the US economy and created and employs more than most other sectors of the US economy, even as President Trump’s actions could decimate the renewable energy industry and the hundreds of thousands of jobs it’s creating.

Solar-based fuels are becoming closer to reality as a replacement for coal and oil, thanks to researchers at the Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) and the California Institute of Technology (Caltech). In the past two years they’ve identified 12 more materials that could produce solar-based fuels—that’s nearly double the 16 such materials discovered over the past four decades. 

Renewable energy is one of the keys drivers for new jobs in the US. New research from the American Wind Energy Association (AWEA) and Navigant Consulting shows that wind industry jobs grew nearly 17 percent to 102,500 direct jobs and is poised to grow to 248,000 jobs, driving $85 billion in economic activity over the next four years, according to new analysis released today by Navigant Consulting.

As the battles for and against net-metering shape up across the country utility commissions will have to decide how they value rooftop solar power. The New York Public Service Commission today voted to approve the first phase of its Value of Distributed Energy Resources order, which will help determine a value for such resources. 

The US installed a total of 14.8 gigawatts of solar power in 2016—nearly double what was installed in 2015, according to the figures released today (March 9) in the U.S. Solar Market Insight 2016 Year-in-Review report by GTM Research and the Solar Energy Industries Association (SEIA). The report found that, on average, a megawatt of photovoltaics came online every 36 minutes in the US and it was the top source of new electric generation in the US, representing 39 of the new capacity that came online in the year. 

Ibiden, a Japanese manufacturer of parts for electronics, including Apple products, will power all of its manufacturing for Apple products with renewable energy, including sourcing energy from a floating solar photovoltaic facility outside Nagoya, Japan. It’s the first company in Japan to join Apple’s push to get suppliers to use renewable energy.