Governors' Wind Energy Coalition

POWERING DOWN: The trade wars are going electric — and the planet and your pocketbook might be paying the price.

From tariffs on solar panels to export controls on critical minerals, countries are dragging the entire electrification supply chain into growing trade tensions. Just last month, President Donald Trump issued broad restrictions on imported grid equipment — a move widely seen as the latest attempt to keep out Chinese-made technology.

Such trade barriers threaten to raise costs for companies, slow economic growth, and complicate ongoing efforts to address climate change and adopt renewable energy technology.

That isn’t a warning from activists; it’s coming from bankers, utilities and grid operators.

“Trade fragmentation makes green products more expensive worldwide relative to non-green products,” European Central Bank analysts warned earlier this year. “This undermines the adoption of green technologies, leading to higher greenhouse gas emissions in the global economy.”

Rising power demand and efforts to slash planet-warming pollution are boosting clean technology markets. But those much-needed goods are becoming pricier and harder to get as governments throw up trade barriers to protect domestic industries and counter China.

Industry data shows U.S. tariffs on copper have increased costs for wire by 11.4%, for switchgear by more than 4% and for capacitors that store power by more than 6%. Domestically made transformers now cost 10% more to produce than when Trump took office, according to Bureau of Labor Statistics figures.

While it’s still early days, the dynamic risks slowing the uptake of clean energy, obstructing global climate action and pushing up electricity bills.

“The transition in certain sectors is still going quite fast, but you do wonder if in the absence of all of this trade conflict, if it could be faster,” said Chris Aylett, a researcher at Chatham House. “It’s difficult to know.”

Tariffs on batteries, EVs, electrolysers, heat pumps, solar panels and wind turbines all went up over the past two years, according to the International Energy Agency. That doesn’t even account for other measures such as export controls, import restrictions, subsidy disputes and domestic content requirements.

Governments are framing such restrictions as necessary to protect jobs and national security. They also offer a counterpoint: Allowing China to continue to dominate the clean-tech economy could undermine public support for the energy transition.

“How can we explain to our fellow citizens that decarbonization is an opportunity if our batteries are made in China?” EU industry chief Stéphane Séjourné asked when presenting the bloc’s made-in-Europe proposal earlier this year.

But some companies and utilities are starting to get nervous — for example when it comes to ensuring power grids are equipped to deal with more demand and more renewables.

“It is slowing things down for sure,” said Karen Wayland, CEO of the GridWise Alliance, a coalition of U.S. electric utilities focused on grid infrastructure.

European grid operators also recently warned that the made-in-Europe requirements risk obstructing electrification efforts.

Excessive restrictions “would ultimately impact network investment and, by extension, the cost and pace of electrification,” the European Distribution System Operators (E.DSO) said last week.

HELLO AND WELCOME TO SURGE: I’m Zia Weise, senior climate reporter in POLITICO’s Brussels newsroom. Send tips and feedback to zweise@politico.eu.

BYO ENERGY TO THE DATA CENTER PARTY: Tech giants should build additional renewable power to compensate for the energy hunger of their data centers, the European Commission’s second-in-command told POLITICO.

Teresa Ribera, in charge of the green transition and competition policy at the European Union’s executive arm, warned that the infrastructure’s vast appetite for electricity risks fueling economic and societal tensions.

Problem, meet solution: More and more data centers are seeking grid connections in Europe, relying on existing energy capacities to power artificial intelligence. But the supply can’t keep up. Only this week, the EU’s energy regulators’ agency warned that data centers’ electricity demand in Portugal is fast outpacing supply.

Ribera said in an interview that operators ought to provide their own renewable energy to meet the increasing demand. She pointed to a recent draft Spanish government decree that would require data centers to source 80 percent of their electricity from newly installed green energy. Ireland has a similar condition in place.

They can afford it: “The companies behind this business are … concentrating market power and capacity in amounts that have not been perceived ever before. So, boldly speaking, they can be demanded to invest in what they may be needing and how it prevents additional conflicts with local communities,” Ribera said.

What wasn’t clear is whether that’s just a thought bubble or if Ribera is considering an EU-level regulation to make Big Tech invest in renewable power. The commission is currently working on new standards for data center energy efficiency. — Zia Weise

BURNHAM BACKS DATA CENTERS: U.K. Prime Minister Andy Burnham ruled out a moratorium on data center development, telling members of Parliament in the House of Commons on Wednesday that while he understood “the concern” felt by communities hosting them, they could also become a “magnet” for investment.

The comment came in response to warnings from one of his own MPs, Ian Lavery, about data center development in his constituency in Northeast England. Burnham’s left-wing political rivals, the Green Party, have also called for a moratorium on the energy-guzzling infrastructure. — Charlie Cooper

A SHIFT IN THE WIND: Very little has gone right for the U.S. offshore wind industry in recent years. So it’s notable to see wind generation in New England on the rise this summer. That’s where two of the United States’ first offshore wind projects have begun operating, making them a bellwether for the beleaguered industry.

Revolution Wind and Vineyard Wind I have endured construction delays, stop-work orders from the Trump administration and, in the latter’s case, a messy court case with its turbine supplier.

Now federal energy data suggests they are picking up steam.

Total New England wind generation stood at 3,950 gigawatt-hours through the first eight months of 2026, a 50 percent increase over the same time last year, according to preliminary U.S. Energy Information Administration data. Those figures include onshore wind generation. But no other wind projects have come online this year, suggesting it is the two offshore projects that are driving the numbers higher. Revolution Wind and Vineyard Wind’s combined generating capacity (1.5 gigawatts) nearly equals the capacity of all other wind projects in the region (1.6 GW).

Neither project has reached full strength. Ørsted, the developer of Revolution Wind, told investors last month that it had installed 61 of the project’s 65 turbines. It said the majority of those had generated first power.

Vineyard Wind officially completed construction in March, but the developer disclosed in a court case earlier this year that none of its 62 turbines have ramped up to full capacity. It is locked in a court battle with GE Vernova, the project’s turbine supplier, over who should cover the costs of a 2024 accident that saw a blade detach and crash into the ocean.

Three other offshore wind projects are under construction in the U.S.

The generation data for July, when wind speeds typically subside, was particularly notable. New England witnessed 487 GWh of wind generation during the month. That would have been the highest monthly total in the last five years. But this year it ranked fifth. — Benjamin Storrow

NUCLEAR DATA: Google is becoming an extension cord for nuclear power plants. The tech giant said Wednesday it had signed a 22-year contract to buy power from a Finnish nuclear power plant, enabling the facility to stay open beyond 2030. The deal came one day after the U.S. Department of Energy finalized a $1.9 billion loan to restart a shuttered nuclear reactor in Iowa that will provide power to Google’s data centers in the state.

The Finnish nuclear deal is part of a wider plan Google announced Wednesday to build out its AI infrastructure in Finland. The company said it plans to spend $13 billion over the next two years to build data centers and support infrastructure in four Finnish communities, Pieter Haeck reports for Pros.

Google said it will buy electricity from the Finish utility Fortum under a “22-year life extension power purchase agreement.” Revenue from that deal will help keep the Loviisa nuclear power plant open. Without the deal, the plant “could not continue operations beyond 2030,” Google said in a statement. As part of the deal, Fortum and Google will explore the potential for additional reactors at the Loviisa site.

“Our collaboration with Google provides a strong foundation for the continued development and reliable operation of our Loviisa power plant for decades to come,” Fortum’s president and CEO, Markus Rauramo, said in a statement. — Benjamin Storrow

EUROPE’S GAS PRICES UP: European gas prices rose again Wednesday, sparking fears of a hard winter ahead for businesses and households (not to mention the politicians trying to tame widespread cost of living concerns). The TTF benchmark price briefly rose above the €80 per megawatt house mark, a threshold not crossed since the winter of 2023. A U.K. campaign group warned of a “brutal” winter ahead for energy costs. — Charlie Cooper

SOLAR GEOENGINEERING SURGES: The amount of funding for activities related to limiting global warming by reflecting sunlight into space hit a record last year of around $109 million, according to new data released Wednesday.

That annual figure, calculated by the solar geoengineering transparency group SRM360, is nearly three times as large as the total funding it found in 2024. And it’s still likely an undercount.

Climate context: The jump in solar geoengineering funding comes as global temperatures soar to new heights and international cooperation falters on efforts to limit planet-warming emissions amid a growing focus on increasing energy securityand a race to build new power for AI.

But geoengineering technologies are no panacea. If widely deployed, the tech would only temporarily turn down the planetary thermostat and, in the process, could disrupt global weather patterns, damage the ozone layer and increase geopolitical tensions to the breaking point.

Data details: SRM360 compiled funding disclosed by governments, philanthropic groups and startups to advance solar geoengineering research, governance or technologies. Since 2016, the largest source of funding for solar geoengineering efforts has been the philanthropic sector, led by the United Kingdom’s Quadrature Climate Foundation. (SRM360 is among the initiatives funded by Quadrature.)

Last year’s record-breaking total was largely due to the $60 million funding round announced in October 2025 by Stardust Solutions, a U.S.-Israeli startup whose backers include Silicon Valley luminaries and an Italian industrial dynasty. Stardust is developing reflective particles and systems to spray them into the stratosphere for prospective government customers.

Not the whole picture: SRM360 took a narrow view of which companies are seeking to commercialize solar geoengineering tech. A POLITICO analysis from last December revealed that several other startups are considering sunlight reflectionas a potentially lucrative side project. Those companies were not included in the SRM360’s funding dataset.

“It’s not so much a technological limitation as much as what has the highest, best impact,” said Ally Stone, the chief strategy officer at Reflect Orbital, which has raised $28.7 million to develop a satellite network that can direct sunlight to solar panels at night. It could make “more sense to reflect sunlight towards or away from the Earth,” she said. — Corbin Hiar

WARNING SHOT: A Democratic congressman from Virginia, Suhas Subramanyam, proposed a national plan for guiding data center construction, writes Owen Dahlkamp. It would require states to make tech companies pay for the added energy costs from data centers, or face losing highway funding. The plan also calls for measuring the facilities’ use of water and power. Subramanyam’s district has more than 300 data centers, with another 200 facilities being planned.

ARCTIC SHORTCUT: A Chinese ship is using the Northern Sea Route to carry 1,300 containers of EVs, batteries and other renewable energy equipment from Qingdao to Teesport in England. The trip is the first of eight that the shipping line Sea Legend plans to run through the Arctic this season, as climate change intensifies and polar ice disappears.

OIL AND WATER: U.S. Central Command said Tuesday that it destroyed five Iranian oil tankers after Iran twice targeted an American Navy ship with ballistic missiles, writes Jalen Beckford. The U.S. ship evaded the attack and continued to enforce a blockade of Iranian oil shipments. U.S. forces directed the crews of the Iranian vessels to abandon their ships before striking them in the Gulf of Oman, CENTCOM said.